


The End of Youth

by solarscars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Banter, Canon Typical Violence, DH AU, Deathly Hallows AU, Depression, Detention, Draco is a really good dueller AU, Drinking, Drinking Games, Duelling, Duelling Lessons, Dumbledore Bashing, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Grief, HBP AU, Happy Ending, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Horcrux Hunting, House Merging, Legilimency, M/M, MUCH less than in the original books, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Occlumency, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Slow Burn, Wandless Magic, War, all my homies hate dumbledore, and draco is depressed over being a death eater, and they are at each other's throats but also falling in love with each other, because I say so, but are still just kids under the weight of a war they didn't start but now have to end, but not that linearly of course, canon typical Harry obliviousness, halfblood prince, has some Hogwarts Eighth year vibes terms of the house merging, long fic, ok idk how to describe this except what if the gryffindors and slytherins slowly become friends, possibly but not guaranteed, secret passageways, seriously someone save this stupid kid, sixth year, so a lot of antics and pranks but also harry is depressed over sirius, teenage antics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27983247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarscars/pseuds/solarscars
Summary: To the collective horror of the Hogwarts students, they return for Sixth Year to find that Dumbledore has merged the houses in an attempt to unify the school. This might be the best thing to ever happen to the Wizarding World — if they all don’t kill each other first. Because there’s something different about Draco Malfoy this year, and Harry is determined to find out what. As the war presses closer and promises to rob them of everything they hold most dear, Harry finds himself caught between duty and desire — and the strangest feeling that Draco Malfoy, after everything, might just be worth saving.[Long, SLOW BURN HBP AU (that continues all the way through Deathly Hallows). Draco Malfoy + Slytherin House redemption arcs.]
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 51
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoy the story! I'm about halfway done writing this (should be about 200K when we're done) so I will post regularly until I get up to the part I'm still writing. Until then updates will be twice a week!

**~*~ PART ONE: SIXTH YEAR ~*~**

“You cannot save people. You can only love them.”

-Anais Nin, Diaries

Harry closed his eyes and tried to focus on something meaningless: the press of the train window against his forehead, cold even through the layer of his invisibility cloak, or the pang of hunger in his stomach. He wouldn’t eat until the feast tonight, but he didn’t mind. The dull ache of it was relaxing in a strange way — or at the very least distracting. Easier to focus on something inconsequential like what dinner they would be served rather than how it now felt strange to be heading back to the place that always felt like home. 

Another year at Hogwarts, just like any other: first years nervous on the platform, chocolate frogs leaping from their packages. How time could just go on so easily as if Harry’s whole world had not ended just a few months before, he didn’t know. 

His stomach grumbled loudly in the silence of the cabin. Outside in the hall the trolley rolled along, but he wasn’t going to risk buying anything. This empty cabin had proved to be the perfect hiding place. The luggage rack over one of the seats was letting off a pale pink mist, some hex gone wrong, so an “out of order” sign on the front door ensured that no one else would come in. He had ducked in as soon as Ron and Hermione left for the prefect’s carriage, flipped off the lights, and slipped on his invisibility cloak. From the outside, the cabin appeared perfectly empty. 

And Harry was perfectly alone.

It was a better situation than the alternative, having to make polite small talk with his friends and classmates, but it still wasn’t quite bearable. The darkness of the cabin, the sterile chill of it, reminded him a little too much of third year. The eerie joylessness as the dementors opened the compartment door, having stopped the train to look for —

Harry neatly cut off that thought before it could go any farther, his hands tightening into fists in his lap. He gritted his teeth and looked out the window as the formless landscape blurred by.

Was it ever going to get any easier? 

Or, perhaps a better question, was he ever going to get better at hiding it? Hiding the aching emptiness that felt like a raw wound inside of him, just waiting to suck him into its depths forever? 

He’d had the whole summer to let himself be pulled towards that emptiness. He’d raged. He’d torn apart his room, hurled rocks into the street, beat his knuckles bloody pummeling the trees along the edge of the park. When that didn’t work, he’d let himself lay motionless on his bed for hours or days at a time, not eating, not sleeping, just watching the fan swing dull rotations on the ceiling. He’d even kissed a muggle girl, a pretty brunette in Little Whinging he’d caught staring at him behind the grocery store, hoping that his brain might shut off even for a moment. 

But it never shut off. The strangest things brought… _him_ (he could hardly bear to think the name) to Harry’s mind. He would be watching the news from behind the couch, or serving Dudley his dinner, or cleaning Hedwig’s cage, and it was like it he was back at the Department of Mysteries — or, even worse than reliving his death itself, reliving the measley number of happy moments they’d had together. Or even worse still, thinking about all the future moments they might have had, that were now dead and gone. 

Some days he missed him so much he couldn't breathe. Missed him so much that he thought, just for a minute, that it might have been better if Lupin hadn’t stopped him from following his godfather through that wretched veil.

It wasn't the same as losing his parents. Not better or worse (how could you compare? how can you even quantify such a thing?), just different. He never knew his parents. There was not a day in Harry Potter’s life that he could remember where he ever believed he would know them. He hadn’t even truly realized what he was missing until he’d met Molly and Arthur. 

But he had known Sirius. 

_Sirius._ He pressed a hand to his chest, as if that would somehow stop the pain.

To mourn someone you expected a lifetime with, to mourn someone while knowing exactly what it felt like to have their arms wrapped around you; to have a million things you want to tell them — silly things, stupid things, and important ones too — and know you’ll never speak to them or hear their voice again… 

It was unbearable. Harry really didn’t know if he was going to bear it. To think that he would carry this loss with him for the rest of his life was enough to make him think terrible, mad things. _I wish I never met him. Why did he have to make me know him?_

Which only sent a fresh wave of guilt and grief tearing through him. 

Maybe it would be easier at Hogwarts. There were plenty of distractions there. More than at the Dursleys or the Burrow, where he had spent the last two months pretending to ignore the concerned looks Ron and Hermione would give each other when they thought he wasn’t looking.

The sound of the door sliding open jarred him from his thoughts. He shifted back into his place against the window, praying that he hadn’t been found. But when he looked up at the door there was no one there. 

Then a grotesque, extended stomach appeared a few seconds before a balding head. The man was rubbing one hand through his walrus-like mustache and using the other to maneuver through the hallway that was really much too small for him. Harry could see the upper body of someone — likely whoever had opened the door — press back against the cabin’s window to allow him to pass. 

But the man stopped, reaching out a hand to herald someone. 

“Longbottom, is it?” he said, his voice warm and genial.

“Yes, sir,” came Neville’s voice from somewhere down the hall. “You must be Professor Slughorn.”

“That I am, my boy. Say, might you be willing to pass this note on to Mr. Potter for me? I hear he is a friend of yours, and I would love to have him in my cabin to meet the young lad.”

A light scoff sounded from the doorway, too low for Slughorn to hear over his own booming voice, and then Draco Malfoy was pushing himself through the narrow gap between Slughorn and the door into Harry’s compartment.

He shut the door with a flourish, muffling Neville’s reply: “I’d be happy to sir, but I haven’t seen him this whole trip.” 

Harry felt a wave of dislike run through him at Malfoy’s pale face. He hadn’t forgotten what he had seen in Knockturn Alley, nor had he dispelled his Death Eater theory (even though his friends had continued to brush him off). 

Harry pressed himself against his seat further, hoping that Malfoy wouldn’t choose this bench. Why had he come in here at all? The sign on the door had been warning enough for everyone else. But then Malfoy pulled the blinds of the window down and exhaled, and Harry realized he might have been looking for a hiding spot of his own.

Malfoy didn’t take a seat at all, though. Instead he put his hands on his narrow hips and watched the pink mist furling off of the luggage rack. He gave a little snort, shaking his head, and then he pulled his wand out of his robes. 

He raised it to the metal. Harry could see him muttering something under his breath, and then the mist began to pool into little pink clouds that moved towards the tip of his wand and disappeared. 

If whoever put the sign up couldn’t fix it, it had to be some unfamiliar hex or dark magic. Figures Malfoy would know it.

After that he did sit, thankfully choosing the bench across from Harry, and Harry took the chance to scrutinize his pale, pointed face. He knew he should care very much if a student at his school — and one who hated him, no less — had taken the Dark Mark. In past years, the barest suspicion of it would have haunted Harry’s every waking thought. It was mad, wasn’t it? To think Voldemort would have conscripted a mere child to his cause? 

But even though Harry recognized the danger of it all, recognized the cause for concern, he just didn’t… _feel_ it. It was actually kind of ridiculous, when he really thought about it, and it brought on some weird hysterical feeling in him. 

Draco Malfoy, a Death Eater. Why not? That was just his luck. Maybe Malfoy would jump him in the Potions cupboard and hand deliver him to Voldemort.

Harry shook his head as if to clear the thought. Something was seriously wrong with him. He had to be losing it. He should tell Dumbledore right away of his suspicions — that was the responsible thing to do.

Malfoy leaned back in his seat, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes. He raised his pale hands over his face, screwing his fingers into his eyelids.

There _was_ something different about him, even Hermione and Ron would have to admit. Harry just couldn’t put his finger on what. In the darkness of the cabin, he looked a little ill, really — paler than usual and gaunt — but it was something more than that. It unnerved Harry. Maybe he had just never been this close to Malfoy without him sneering or saying something nasty. 

Then Malfoy lowered his hands and stared blankly into space, and there was something… despairing in his gaze. Yes, despaired was the right word, because when he turned and looked out the window, Harry swore the light glinting off the passing lake illuminated moisture in Malfoy’s eyes. He wasn’t crying by any means, but suddenly there was emotion rising to his face that he was desperately trying to reign in.

Harry pulled the Cloak down, praying it was covering his feet, because this was definitely not something he should be here for. And then the train veered right on the track, barreling away from the lake towards the castle, and Harry pitched sideways in his seat, throwing a hand out to stop him from falling onto the floor which sounded with a hard _slap_ against the cabin’s panelling. 

Malfoy jumped out of his seat at the noise, all emotion gone. Now his face was perfectly blank and alert, his wand drawn as he stared directly through Harry, trying to make sense of the sound that he had just heard. 

Harry raised his own wand beneath the Cloak, watching Malfoy’s lips for the first sign of an incantation. 

Then, as the train began to slow, he realized it was quite ridiculous to be cowering under his Cloak from Malfoy like he was a helpless first year. He wanted to know if Malfoy was a Death Eater. He wasn’t going to wait around for Malfoy to prove it.

The brakes of the train screamed as they approached the station, a blaringly loud noise that drew Malfoy’s attention away momentarily. Knowing the breaks would drown out the sound of his spell, Harry raised his wand beneath the Cloak and said, “ _Petrificus totalus!”_

The spell hit Malfoy comically, his eyes freezing wide in disbelief before he slumped backwards against the seat. Harry threw off the Cloak, stepped towards him, and, without preamble, yanked up his shirt sleeve.

And there it was. Jet black, terrifyingly eerie and intricate. The snake writhed on Malfoy’s forearm, slithering through the skull’s eye socket. 

Harry had expected to see it, had somehow known against all reason when he saw Malfoy in Diagon Alley that he had been Marked, but to see it right in front of him was another thing altogether.

And it didn’t feel how he expected it to. That was turning into this year’s recurring theme. 

Harry looked up into Malfoy’s face. It was unchanged, frozen in shock, but Harry swore he could feel Malfoy’s panic. 

“Following in Daddy’s footsteps,” Harry said, his voice low and mean. “He must be so proud.” 

He let go of Malfoy’s arm. Outside the cabin students laughed and chattered as they exited the train. Without another word, Harry opened the door of the cabin and then fired a _Finite_ at Malfoy and a _Colloportus_ in rapid succession. It would slow him down for a second, enough time for Harry to blend into the crowd and let himself be pushed towards the train door.

When he found Hermione and Ron on the platform something must have shown on his face, because they watched him approach with strange expressions. Hermione opened her mouth in question.

“Later,” Harry cut her off, because Neville and Luna were headed their way.

Then, in spite of himself, he began to laugh. He had petrified Draco Malfoy. He felt a little wild with his own daring. Too late, he realized he should have just left him there and let the train bring him back to London.

Hagrid’s loud voice boomed over the platform, beckoning the first years to follow him. Loud, breathy huffs from the thestrals rose in milky whirls into the air. And Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. 

Harry laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe, and when he finally composed himself, he didn’t even care that his friends were watching him like he was, at long last, losing it. 

~*~

“You _saw_ _it_?” Hermione said over dinner, once Ron had cast a silencing spell he’d learnt from Charlie over everyone in the general vicinity. She was looking at him in horror, her fork frozen halfway to her mouth.

“Yep,” Harry replied, not looking up from his second helping of mash. “Petrified him and yanked his sleeve up, the little git.”

“Harry, you didn’t!” came Hermione’s scandalized reply. Harry looked up at her incredulously.

“It’s _Malfoy_ , Hermione,” Ron said. “He deserved it.”

Among the warm and familiar chatter of the Great Hall, the memory of the Dark Mark felt much more foreboding than it had in the chill of the empty train cabin. 

“What would Voldemort want with a slimy bastard like him, though?” Ron turned to watch the Slytherin table over the lip of his cup of pumpkin juice. He gave a dramatic shudder at the thought of it.

Hermione frowned. “Well, now he has someone in Hogwarts. Who knows what he’ll have Malfoy doing.” 

“He already has Snape,” Ron grumbled.

“We don’t know that,” Hermione said, and then rolled her eyes at the disbelieving look Ron levelled at her.

Harry let his friend’s conversation fade into the background. His attention had stuck on Dumbledore up at the teacher’s table, getting ready to make his speech. One of his hands was black and gnarled, as if the flesh had died or been cursed. 

When he stepped forward and raised his hand to silence the room, there was a collective gasp — Hermione’s the loudest, right in Harry’s ear — as the students noticed it. With a baleful grin, he let his robe cover it.

“Welcome,” said Dumbledore over the quiet of the hall, “to another year at Hogwarts. I feel particularly honored to see all of your healthy and happy faces smiling back at me, trusting me with your education for another year despite the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in.”

Further down the table, Nigel Wolpert frowned and looked down at his plate. His mother had gone missing over the summer, the Prophet had reported. They reported new missing persons almost every day now, since the Ministry had finally accepted his return. Since the battle at the Department of Ministries had been lost by Voldemort’s Death Eaters, and he had unleashed total war on the Wizarding World.

“Everyone in this hall now knows that Lord Voldemort and his followers are once again at large and gaining strength,” Dumbledore continued gravely. “I cannot promise you that these next months will be easy. But each and every one of us must do our part to maintain the security of our school and our fellows. We are, after all, each other’s keepers. New magical fortifications have been put in place to secure the grounds, and I implore every student to mind the curfew with care. You are not to be out of bed after hours. 

“Furthermore, the staff and Board of Governors, along with myself, have approved some greater changes in hopes of best maintaining the safety and unity of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Dumbledore stopped speaking and seemed to steady himself for a moment. There was an uneasy silence over the hall as they waited for his next words. Ron looked over at Hermione as if she knew what he was going to say. She shrugged helplessly.

“Effective immediately,” he declared, “the Four Houses shall be dissolved.”

There was a short, stunned silence. Harry felt his stomach drop out. Then, as the words truly sank in, the hall exploded into fury.

“He’s joking right? That was a joke?” Ron said, his mouth hanging open. Parvati looked close to tears. Behind him, a Slytherin began screaming expletives — even when Seamus turned and Silenced him, his mouth continued to move in soundless fury. 

Dumbledore held up a hand. It took a full minute for the students to fall silent.

“Instead” Dumbledore continued calmly, as if the interruption had not happened, “half of each existing house will be combined with half of another, forming four groups of mixed students. In a symbolic gesture, we have decided to merge the houses of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, along with Gryffindor and Slytherin, to best bridge the divides between our students. The Sorting Hat has randomly divided the houses, and we will be sending the parchment with your new placements to every table.”

The anger of the hall seemed to evaporate with his words. Now there was only empty, blind shock.

“ _Slytherins_ ?” Ron whispered, looking over at Harry with a horror on his face that he had not seen since the acromantulas. “They’re going to _symbolically_ murder us.”

Dumbledore sent four scrolls of parchment drifting towards the table. The students sitting closest to him at each House table caught it, read it silently, and passed it on. Their faces ranged from numbness, to disgust, to horror.

“I know that the Houses have been your homes and your families. But there is no place for petty rivalries and prejudices in our world any longer, and I feel sorry for the degree to which our House system has encouraged this at Hogwarts. As hard as this may be to accept, I believe this should be a joyous change —” Ron snorted loudly— “that will foster new bonds and, in the end, strengthen our school in the face of true evil. Over time, perhaps it will be fit to dissolve the Houses altogether and usher in a new era at Hogwarts.” 

Dumbledore smiled serenely and then raised a finger, as though suddenly remembering something. “You will be permitted, of course, to keep your Heads of House as your primary source of advising and aide.”

“How generous of him,” Hermione scathed.

The parchment had finally reached him. Harry spread it out in front of them, their three heads crowding over it, along with Neville and Ginny who had moved closer to see.

At the top of the page were two headings: **Gryffindor/Slytherin Group One, to be Housed in Gryffindor Tower** and **Gryffindor/Slytherin Group Two, to be Housed in the Slytherin Dungeons.**

His eyes moved down the page. With a sigh of relief, he saw his name under the Gryffindor Tower list.

_Hermione Granger_

_Harry Potter_

_Ronald Weasley_

_Ginverva Weasley_

Then he looked up, and saw Neville’s horrified expression. He had been moved to the Dungeons, along with Seamus, Dean, Parvati, the Creevy brothers, and a score of other names. Parvati was openly sobbing now. 

Neville looked like he might be ill. They watched him warily, not quite knowing what to say.

“Oh Neville,” Ginny finally said, biting her lip. “I’ll steal flesh eating slugs from Hagrid’s! We can stuff their pillows with them!” 

Harry felt the weight on his chest lighten a bit as Neville laughed. He thought of Neville working so hard in the DA meeting last year and knew he would be fine. He would miss him, of course — he would miss everything: the commotion and banter in the boy’s dorm room, the easy atmosphere of Gryffindor Tower that the Slytherins were sure to ruin. But it wasn’t the end of the world. Privately he thought the students of Hogwarts needed a little reality check.

But then Ron’s finger trailed further down the page, reading the bottom of the list. He let out a shocked sound as he moved down the list of Slytherins about to take up residence in the Tower:

_Millicent Bulstrode_

_Draco Malfoy_

_Theodore Nott_

_Pansy Parkinson_

_Blaise Zabini_

The list continued on. _Leave Nott, leave him, I say,_ Lucius Malfoy had roared as his friends had tried to escape from the Department of Mysteries. How many other Slytherins were the children of Death Eaters or Voldemort sympathizers? What was Dumbledore _thinking_?

Ron was watching Harry with wide eyes, and Harry knew they were thinking along the same line. But Hermione had a look on her face that meant she was miles away.

“The Sorting Hat chose these placements?” she said. “What, and the three of us just happened to be lucky enough to stay together, in our home dorm? Dumbledore definitely looked out for us.” 

“I guess I’m just a toad wart, then!” Neville said with a queasy little groan. 

Ignoring that, Hermione insisted, “You have to go speak with him soon, Harry. About Malfoy and all of this too.”

“Quite frankly, ‘Mione, I don’t think Dumbledore’s in his right mind anymore,” Ron said. “Maybe someone did curse him.” 

Quiet fell over the Hall again as Dumbeldore summoned the parchments back. 

“A staff member will be in each of your common rooms after the feast to help facilitate the change. I expect there to be an adjustment period, but I have full faith that Hogwarts as a school and each one of you as individuals will grow from this. If a single prejudice is dispelled, a single new friendship blossomed, then I shall consider this a success.”

“Yeah, and if a single Slytherin gets mounted on the wall like an Elf’s head?” Harry muttered darkly. Ron snickered. 

“Now, our final matter.” Dumbledore was suddenly more serious, his voice grave and dark. “I am sure all of you followed the news this summer. While you should take comfort in the fact that Hogwarts is as safe as it can be, I will not lie to you and say that you have nothing to fear with the state of the Wizarding World today. Therefore, students in years one to four will be following an advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum under the new professorship of Severus Snape. Students in years five through seven, along with their enriched OWL and NEWT level material, will have the opportunity to learn practical defense skills in a twice weekly workshop. All levels are welcome, and you shall find in your new common rooms tonight an appointment for each of you to be evaluated and placed into the correct level workshop this coming weekend. I implore you to take these lessons seriously. The life you save may be your own.” 

A chill had settled over the students. For his friends, the threat of Voldemort had been real for a long time. But Harry imagined that hearing Dumbledore encourage them to learn real, practical defense against someone they’d only read about in the paper would be downright terrifying to most of the school. 

With that, Dumbledore clapped his hands together warmly and said, “Enjoy your dessert!”

Harry really, really hated him sometimes. 

He looked around, suddenly shocked and nervous, as though someone might have overheard his thoughts. It was just that the thought itself had sprung up so suddenly, he didn’t even know where it came from. But it felt less like a new thought than it did that he was finally articulating something he had felt since his conversation with Dumbledore in his office after the Ministry last year. 

Somewhere along the way, he had just stopped _believing_ in Dumbledore. That he was all-knowing, or all-powerful, or that he always had their best interests at heart. He understood why Dumbledore had lied to him, he really did. He just couldn’t go back to the time where he was just a kid, clueless in the dark. 

Dessert appeared on the table before them, and Harry had a helping of every single thing within arm’s reach. As soon as he left this hall, left the table of his previous Housemates, he would no longer be able to pretend that a single thing in his life was as it used to be.

~*~

If they were supposed to put on a big show of inter-house unity and lead the Slytherins to their new common room, they had disappointed Dumbledore already. The remaining original Gryffindors trudged from the Great Hall up to the Fat Lady Portrait in an uncharacteristic silence. No one quite knew what to say. No one could forget the sight of their friends turning the opposite way to head down to the dungeons.

“Why the long faces, my darlings?” The Fat Lady intoned.

“ _Bumbling bagpipe,”_ Ron said. It came out more of a growl, and the Fat Lady shook a finger at him.

“You will never make any new friends like that!” But thankfully the portrait swung open. 

They collapsed in the common room unceremoniously, soaking up their last few minutes of peace. After a minute or two, Lavender Brown started wailing from outside the portrait.

“I just want one last moment in the tower!” she cried. “This is my home! _Let me in!_ ” 

Harry looked around awkwardly. Ginny and Hermione giggled, likely just trying to find some levity in the situation — they had never particularly liked Lavender, after all — but there was something desperately sad about it.

McGonagall entered a few minutes later with the Slytherins in tow. Some of the young Gryffindors hung back quietly by the fireplace, but the older years were on their feet in an instant. Katie Bell and Pansy Parkinson were in each other’s faces before Harry even knew what was happening, but most of the student’s turned their frustration on McGonagall.

“You have to do something Professor!”

“As if I’m going to sleep in the same room with a slimy Slytherin—”

“Like we want to share with you half-wits!” Millicent fired back.

Nearly tripping Hermione as he came barrelling around the couch, Cormac McGlaggen joined in, “Professor, you can’t expect us to be okay with—”

McGonagall, who had weathered the outbursts in stony silence, cut him off sharply. 

“That is exactly what I expect of you,” she said in her most unflinching tone, and the students — even the Slytherins — fell silent. 

“In case you failed to notice,” McGonagall continued in a tight, measured tone, “there is a war on. And it is only going to get worse. That is the truth of the matter; I won’t sugarcoat it for you. If we don’t join together now, I fear we might lose something we can never get back.”

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance. No one had ever heard her speak like this before. 

Then Pansy muttered under her breath, “If any of you snore, I swear on Merlin’s wand—”

With a sigh that seemed to take everything out of her, McGonagall said, “All of you, listen carefully. The placards on the bedroom doors indicate your new sleeping arrangements. You’ll find your belongings already there. Now, just because you remained in Gryffindor tower does not mean you are Gryffindor House, and the Slytherins are the interlopers. This space belongs to them just as much as it does to the original members of Gryffindor House. If it helps, please imagine your former Gryffindors in the Slytherin Dungeons right now, and treat your Slytherin housemates how you hope your friends are being treated.”

“Professor,” Ginny piped in, “what about Quidditch?”

With a shock, Harry realized he hadn’t thought about Quidditch at all. Normally he couldn’t wait to get out on the pitch, and the Captaincy was something he had been dreaming about since his very first year. But now, as the students waited with baited breath for McGonagall’s response, Harry realized he didn’t care in the slightest. He just felt numb.

“The four appointed captains will remain as such, representing the original houses. However, all students should try out under the captain in their new house. Madam Hooch will oversee each tryout to ensure that no bias keeps a worthy player off a team.”

Ron gave Harry a little punch on the shoulder that he probably meant to be encouraging. 

“I’m not trying out under Potter,” Harper sneered. 

“Don’t play at all, then,” Ginny shot back. 

McGonagall eyed the exchange and then seemed to deliberately ignore it, shaking her head. 

“If that is all,” she said wearily, “I will leave you to it. Do be sure to check your appointment times for Professor Snape’s defence tryouts.” 

And then the new housemates were alone, only the crackling fire between them. The gryffindor first years barrelled up the stairs to their room; it seemed the situation had not dampened their excitement at all, which Harry was glad for. 

A deathly silence fell over the remaining students. 

“This blows,” Katie announced, and then trudged up the stairs. A few other seventh years followed her, and a group of girls in the year below them. 

Pansy was making a slow sweep around the common room, dragging her hand along the tapestries. 

“It’s so… light,” Blaise declared, his lip curled up. He nudged Malfoy with his elbow. “How much you want to bet Goyle gets Longbottom to cry within the first hour.”

Malfoy only rolled his eyes. 

Watching the exchange at his side, Hermione gripped Harry’s arm.

“It’s awful isn’t it? I can hardly stand to look at him.” Her voice was trembling. “I can’t believe I didn’t believe you. I can see it now. There’s something… _off_ in his eyes.”

So he wasn’t imagining things. Hermione had noticed it too. He watched Malfoy, trying to put his finger on it.

“Hey!” Ron yelled, jumping up from the sofa. “Don’t you dare.”

Millicent Bulstrode had begun to cast color-changing charms on the drapes, turning them a deep green. Theo, who was standing off from the group, cheered loudly and pointed his wand at Harry and Hermione. They jumped up on instinct, drawing their wands, but then relaxed when the sofa they’d been sitting on harmlessly changed color.

“ _Expelliarmus!”_ Ron yelled at Millicent.

“Ron, stop!” Hermione shouted, but Millicent had already cast a _Protego_ , flicking aside the spell harmlessly.

“ _Tarantallegra_!” she fired back.

Ron, who had turned to glare at Hermione, was hit by the jinx straight in the chest. Immediately his feet began to move of their own accord, in some weird combination of an Irish jig and wild flailing.

The Slytherins laughed uproariously. Ron was beet red as he reached out to grip the fireplace, trying to push himself down into place. 

“ _Finite,”_ Hermione cast, and Pansy made an exaggerated frown. 

“Oh, do let him continue, it’s for his own good,” she said with a smirk. “He got rather round over holiday.” 

The group snickered again. Harry, who knew they could go on all night like this if they wanted to, took a step forward.

“That’s enough. Turn the whole room green for all we care. Just stay out of our way, and we’ll stay out of yours.”

“Finally learned to back down from a fight, did you?” Nott drawled. He was transfiguring the lion on the wall into a snake, but had only managed to split its tongue.

“I don’t know,” Harry spit back. “Why don’t you ask your father?” 

Nott straightened, his expression clouding over. “You little—”

“Stop it! Just stop it,” Hermione stomped forward and put herself between them. “We’re all stuck together, there’s nothing we can do about that. There’s no point making each other miserable all year.” 

“This place is miserable,” Blaise muttered.

“I think it’s looking better already,” Millicent said. Then, glaring in Ron’s direction, added, “Could do with a few less Weasley’s.” 

Thankfully Ron let the comment go. Hermione, seemingly satisfied, stepped back to Harry’s side. 

Only one of them hadn’t risen to the bait. Malfoy was still standing at the back of the group, looking haughty and bored. Before, he wouldn’t have hesitated to join in — he would have been leading the assault, his friends snickering behind him. But now there was something cold and remote in his face, and something new in the way he held himself. He still had that effortless grace instilled in him from a lifetime of pureblood tradition, but there was a new tension in his body — almost feline, like a cat poised for the attack.

Harry wasn’t the only one who’d noticed his silence. Pansy put a hand on his arm and grinned up at him.

“What do you think, Draco? Should we color the rugs next?” 

Every Slytherin head turned to face him. For a minute, Harry thought that Malfoy was going to shrug off the comment like he had before. Then Malfoy straightened and smirked down at Pansy, that familiar glint shining in his eyes.

“I say we start by deep cleaning the whole room,” he declared. “Just to get the Mudblood _stench_ out.” 

Pansy giggled and shot a glance at Hermione, but she had no reaction at all. After all this time, she’d probably just grown immune to it.

With that, the Slytherins disbanded, saying dramatic goodbyes as the boys went up one staircase and the girls the other. 

“You’ll be alright?” he said to Hermione, once they were finally alone. 

“I’ll charm my curtains closed,” she replied with a feeble grin. Ron gave her an awkward pat on the head before they finally went up to their room.

Harry stood in the doorway for a minute, taking in the strange sight. Nott, Zabini, and Malfoy had already charmed their curtains and bedding green. Their three beds formed a semi-circle on the left side of the room, with Ron’s and Harry’s on the right. It created a neat divide. 

Blaise was sitting cross-legged on Malfoy’s bed, rifling through his luggage. He pulled out a cauldron cake triumphantly. 

“Knew you hid one away.” 

“Oi,” Theo strode over to him and tried to grab it. “We’re splitting that.”

“Splitting it? It’s mine, you dolts.” Malfoy shook his head as he pulled his robes from his trunk and pressed a hand over them to straighten them out.

Harry looked over at Ron with a raised brow. 

“Mental,” Ron muttered. 

Three heads snapped towards them. Blaise and Theo stopped their scuffling. Dropping off the bed and crossing his arms over his chest, Blaise stepped forward.

“Here’s how it’s going to go,” he declared. “You get your half, and we have ours. Cast whatever charms you want to stop us from crossing over. The center strip,” he drew a line in the air from the entryway to the bathroom door at the far end of the room, “is no-man’s land.” 

“Great,” Ron grumbled, “so we can get our arses hexed off every time we need the loo.”

Blaise shrugged. “Only if you shoot first.”

“Whatever.” Ron stomped across the room and threw himself down on his four-poster. 

Malfoy began casting a string of charms. After a moment, Harry followed suit. _Salvio Hexia. Protego Maxima, Fianto Duri._ A few intruder charms. It would have all seemed a little excessive, if he didn’t know exactly who he was dealing with. 

Finally he cast a silencing charm. The room fell quiet. 

“I give it a week before we’re back to our regular Houses,” Ron said, his voice already thick with sleep.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed half heartedly as he pulled on his pajamas. But something told him they weren’t going to be so lucky.


	2. Chapter 2

Somehow they all survived the night unscathed. Over breakfast the next morning, Ginny and Hermione were in hysterics as they filled the boys in.

“Millicent kept going with her color changing charms.” Ginny shrugged. “So I shot one back.”

“At first it looked like nothing changed,” Hermione explained, barely stifling a giggle, her cheeks flaming red. “But then Millicent went to shower…”

A manic grin spread over Ginny’s face. “Let’s just say she got quite the shock when she took her knickers off.” 

The pumpkin juice Ron had just sipped came spewing out his nose. Ron and the girls collapsed into hysterics as they looked down at the group of Slytherins, now forced to sit at the same table, who were glaring back at them. 

Harry had given a weak smile at the story, but now three curious glances swung to face him as they noticed his silence. 

“I’m never crossing either of you again,” Harry managed, trying for a reassuring smile. Ginny and Hermione looked at each other warily out of the corner of their eyes as Harry tucked into his toast, pretending not to notice.

The hallways were bustling with similar horror stories as he walked to his free period with Ron. Their night, it seemed, had been relatively tame in comparison. A couple first year Slytherins had cast an Endless Night charm on their dorm mates, causing the poor boys to sleep through the first breakfast of their Hogwarts career. As Harry walked into the common room a group of third year girls rushed by, one of them sobbing as she tried to stuff her rapidly enlarging tongue inside her mouth. 

“ _ Reducio,”  _ Harry cast at the poor girl, then told her friends to take her to Madam Pomfrey. 

He had been too dazed this morning from the horrible night sleep he’d gotten to really notice the state of the common room, but now he and Ron looked at each other with wide eyes. Pansy Parkinson was lounging with her feet up on the couch, sending periodic blasts from her wand to the lion’s head bust on the mantle (to the great amusement of a few younger Slytherins). In the back corner, Euan Abercrombie and the other second year Gryffindors were attempting to  _ Incendio  _ the parchment of a young Slytherin girl, furiously scribbling with her quill even though they hadn’t even had a class yet. And, looking upwards, Harry saw that someone had conjured a pool of green smoke to writhe like snakes in a circle overhead. The snakes were hissing and lunging at the stuffed lion someone had enchanted to roar back at them.

It seemed, at least from a distance at breakfast, that the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had merged relatively seamlessly. Hannah Abbott and Padma Patil were arguing loudly across the table – the general gist of it, Harry got, was that Hannah had taken up half of the dorm room with piles of clothes and half-unpacked luggage – but otherwise they seemed to embrace the change as Dumbledore had wanted.

Any hope that the Gryffindor and Slytherins might do the same died as Euan’s  _ Incedio  _ finally caught: missing the parchment altogether, and igniting the girl’s ponytail.

Daphne extinguished the flame immediately over the girl’s frantic screams, but the damage was already done. Pansy was on her feet and crossing the room before anyone could react, shooting Jelly-legs curse at the group of boys, who started firing pure sparks back at her as they wobbled and collapsed in a heap.

“This is shite,” Harry told Ron, who was watching the display with a wince. “I’m not sticking around to watch this nightmare.”

Ron didn’t argue as Harry turned and went right back through the portrait.

~*~

Twenty minutes later Harry sat in Dumbledore’s sitting room, sipping on peppermint tea and trying not to think of the last time he had been here. Dumbledore had received him warmly enough, but with a little ironic smile that said he knew exactly why he was here. 

“How was your summer, Harry?” Dumbledore asked as he stirred in two sugar cubes. Harry smiled thinly. 

“It was alright, sir,” he replied, which was the mildest way he could say it was some of the worst three months of his life.

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m sure you will often find yourself wishing for summer again these next few months.”

Harry grinned. “You mean because of the Slytherins.”

Dumbledore raised his teacup conspiratorial. “I meant no such thing.” But his smile was impish.

“Hermione thinks that you kept the three of us together. I mean, rather than letting the Sorting Hat split us up.” 

“That I did, Harry. I figured, after all I asked of you last year, and after all I will ask of you in the months to come, it was the least I could do.”

Those words landed heavily in the quiet of the office. Harry sipped his tea to avoid having to respond. He tried to remember why he had come here, rather than thinking about the events of last year that Dumbledore was referring to. The prophecy. Sirius… 

He took a deep breath. He had no intention of ratting out the Slytherins – that would be a fatal mistake – even if Dumbledore was probably the only one who could stop the war currently raging in Gryffindor Tower. But one Slytherin in particular he couldn’t stay silent about.

Neatly excising the part of the story where he had petrified him, Harry told Dumbledore what had happened with Malfoy in Diagon Alley and on the train. 

Dumbledore's frown progressively deepened throughout the tale. Once Harry finished, he gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly.

“I can’t say that I’m surprised. I learned over the summer that it is Voldemort’s intention to take up residence in Malfoy Manor as soon as possible.”

Harry felt himself recoil. The thought of living under the same roof as Voldemort was horrifying. 

But, refusing to be distracted, he insisted, “He’s a Death Eater, sir. Who knows what he plans to do to the school.”

“I’m quite confident that I know what Mr. Malfoy plans to do.”

Harry shifted in his seat, waiting for Dumbledore to continue, but he only stared back at Harry through his half-moon spectacles.

“What’s that, sir?” Harry finally prompted.

Dumbledore smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “The moment I feel you need to be concerned, Harry, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Harry blinked. He opened his mouth, and then closed it. 

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But I  _ am _ concerned. He’s a Death Eater,” he repeated, as though Dumbledore hadn’t fully appreciated what that meant the first time.

“Yes, he is. A Death Eater who you will now be living in quite close quarters with.”

Maybe he really had lost it. “Exactly. That’s the problem.”

“Despite all of his antics, I believe Draco Malfoy is quite as harmless as a Kneazle.”

Harry laughed — a short, sarcastic note. “We’ll have to agree to disagree there, Professor.”

“You have to remember, Harry, that he can no longer run to his father. Draco is very much alone this year. And if he proves me wrong then I am quite certain, rubbing elbows with him in Gryffindor Tower, you will be the first to know.”

It was beyond belief. He had seen real, undeniable proof that Malfoy had committed himself to the Dark Lord, and Dumbledore was shrugging him off as though it was insignificant. Harry narrowed his eyes, taking in Dumbledore’s strange expression: the weariness of his frown, the slightly guarded look in his eyes.

Ah. So that was it. Dumbledore did know the threat Malfoy posed, he just didn’t want to discuss it with Harry. He was hiding something from him. Again. 

At least Harry was getting better at recognizing it.

_ Fine then _ , Harry thought belligerently. He was used to Dumbledore keeping him in the dark by now. But that didn’t stop the familiar flare of anger from flickering deep in his stomach as he stared into Dumbledore’s unflinching gaze. 

“Well,” Harry finally said with a shrug. “One less thing for me to worry about, then.” 

It came out more bitter than he intended it, but he meant it: if Dumbledore wasn’t worried, then why should he care? Why should worry that the boy who hated him most had joined up with the man desperate to kill him? 

He was sick of being the responsible one. Sick of worrying over every threat, trying to keep everyone safe, when all he seemed to do in the end was fail. For the first time in a long time, the thought leapt free from the darkest corner of his mind where he had buried it. That if Dumbledore had told him everything last year, maybe the Department of Mysteries wouldn’t have gone the way it had. 

“Ah,” Dumbledore intoned, always too perceptive,“I see that you are angry with me.” He paused, as if expecting Harry to disagree, and then smiled when Harry stayed silent. “That’s quite all right. If I am to take on the responsibility of leading the Order, then I have to take responsibility for its decisions, too.”

“So the Order knows about Malfoy?”

Dumbledore stood and clasped his hands together, giving him that blank expression that Harry knew meant he was about to ignore the question.

“I would like to give you the information you so desire. No one has more of a right to know than you. But there is other information you should be made aware of first. Other information you need to be able to fully appreciate the threat Voldemort poses. So why don’t you come to my office this Thursday, and I will begin to explain the full story to you.” 

“The story?”

“Oh yes. I think you need to know where Voldemort began if you ever hope to defeat him.”

“Right. And the defense lessons with Snape, you think that will prepare me to face him?”

That same guarded look. “I do hope so.”

With as polite a nod as Harry could manage, he let himself be dismissed.

He walked aimlessly through the castle for a few minutes, trying to calm down before he had to go to Defense. There was no reason for him to be so upset. He didn’t even know what he was upset  _ about.  _

Everything, really. He was upset about everything. The fact that Dumbledore was still lying to him, the fact that he had told Harry he was going to have to be the one to kill Voldemort but then acted like he was just a kid who — what? Couldn’t bear to hear the whole truth? 

How could Dumbledore ask him to  _ kill Voldemort,  _ but not do the one thing Harry asked in return? Maybe he hadn’t made himself clear enough. On Thursday, he was going to finally lay it on the line. If Dumbledore won’t tell him what he knew, then Harry wasn’t going to do shit for him.

_ Oh yeah,  _ another side of Harry’s thoughts chimed in.  _ And all the poor Muggles and wizards going missing will just keep disappearing, all because Harry Potter doesn’t like being lied to.  _

Maybe that’s what he was mad about. That he knew his ultimatum to Dumbledore would be false, and Dumbledore knew it too. They both knew that Harry was never walking away from this.

But why did it have to be  _ him?  _ Why couldn’t it be anyone else? Why did  _ he _ have to be chosen?

In another world, his mother and father and Sirius were happy and alive at his side, and his only worries would be silly things like NEWTs or the Quidditch Cup. He could feel that world so closely sometimes that it ached. Nothing would ever make that right. Nothing would ever stop the voice in his head, childish as it may be, that kept screaming one word.

_ Unfair.  _

A smatter of giggles behind him broke him from his thoughts. He turned to see a group of Gryffindor second years shuffling nervously behind him, shoving one of the girls forward.

Noticing that he was looking back, her cheeks flushed bright red, but she pulled herself together and took a step towards him.

“Um, Harry?” she said, her voice high and squeaky.

“Hi,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I was just… I mean, we were wondering… if you knew when Quidditch tryouts were going to be yet?”

Quidditch. Another responsibility. The girls were looking up eagerly at him, waiting.

“Right. Erm, nothing certain yet. But I’ll be sure to let you know.”

The girl nodded eagerly and rejoined her friends, their heads pressed together as the giggling resumed. They were clearly very proud of their friend for summoning the nerve to speak to him. 

It was kind of endearing. Harry felt his mood rise as he headed to class. 

~*~

The rest of the week was volatile, to say the least. The Slytherins were as nasty as ever, and any reservations the Gryffindors might have had about fighting back were long gone. 

In Potions, Blaise Zabini exploded Ron’s cauldron just before Ron could hand in a sample of it to be graded. By the time the smoke cleared, the potion was a charred mess at the bottom of the pewter. Slughorn had thrown away the entire cauldron, eying Ron like he didn’t know how he had managed an Exceeds Expectations.

The next morning over breakfast, Ron charmed Zabini’s sausage link to bite him every time he tried to eat it. Zabini’s lip was gushing blood all over his plate within a minute, and even Hermione had to give Ron credit for that one.

There was no end in sight to their war. But in the hallways, in the classroom, whenever the Professors were around, the Slytherins were perfectly respectable as they’d always been. 

“You know,” Pansy declared when Slughorn had finished waxing poetic about the beauty of inter-house unity, “I couldn’t agree more, sir. It’s really so heartwarming to have been welcomed into Gryffindor Tower with such open arms.” 

Ron pretended to vomit into his cauldron.

But what could they do? After all, the Gryffindors no longer had the high ground; some of them had been just as vicious in their attacks, and he doubted any of the Professors would agree that the Slytherins deserved it.

As for his dormmates, their tenuous peace held. None of them wanted to find themselves hexed in their sleep, so each night they retreated to their respective sides in stony silence and cast their protective enchantments. 

That didn’t mean they weren’t as nasty as ever everywhere else. On Wednesday, bent low over her Arithmancy assignment in the common room, Hermione looked up to a hex in the face. Like a faucet, thick brown mud began to pour from her nose. 

She blushed furiously as she tried to staunch the flow. Nott slipped his wand into his robes with a satisfied smirk, but he wasn’t so happy when Harry vanished the stair under his foot on his way up to their room. He pitched forward and smacked his face against the marble, and the blood that flowed from  _ his  _ nose was bright red.

But the most unsettling thing about it all was that — for the most part — Malfoy remained above the fray. Harry couldn’t help but be aware of the difference in him. Gone was the pettiness, the jeers and barbs, the constant stream of snide comments. He no longer laughed and ridiculed with his friends, and he no longer strutted about like he owned the place. Harry would have considered all of this a positive improvement, if what had replaced it wasn’t so much worse.

It was a subtler type of callousness, which is why it took Harry a few days before he could articulate it. Malfoy was still perfectly composed, still effortlessly cruel. He was just more… remote, Harry settled on, as though a wall had formed separating him from the rest of the world. And that made him so much more dangerous. He never believed Malfoy would really do him harm before. But now when he looked at Malfoy, he didn’t see that wild need to prove himself, or brag about his parentage, or make a crude remark — any of the childish behaviors he had come to associate with him. 

Now, he just saw darkness. 

Over the last five years, despite his best efforts, Harry had come to know Malfoy. He knew what to expect when Malfoy got that wild glint in his eye (some horrible comment was about to spill out of his mouth) or when he puffed up his chest and stuck up his chin (he was about to bring up his father). It was familiar. Malfoy said something horrible, Harry told him to shut it. 

But now Malfoy had become completely unpredictable. When Harry looked at him, he didn’t know who was looking back. A complete, impenetrable wall. 

Uneasily, Harry realized that was exactly how he had felt after Sirius’ death. How he  _ still _ felt. Like he was separated from the rest of the world, not quite a part of all the human experience happening around him. Frozen, just out of reach. 

What had happened to Malfoy to make him so cut off, so above the childish antics that used to be a second language for him? His father’s arrest?  _ Yes, what a traumatizing experience — his Death Eater father getting what he deserved _ . Harry would never in his life regret it.

But if it had transformed Draco Malfoy from a schoolyard bully into someone who was capable of true evil, well… he might not live to regret that.

_ But Dumbledore’s not worried, _ he reminded himself with a bitter scoff. Dumbledore’s words were meaning less and less to him these days. 

Thursday, he told himself all week, repeating it in his head like a chant. On Thursday, he would make Dumbledore understand.

When the day finally came, he was distant and distracted — even more so than usual. Snape had assigned them fifteen inches on the theory of wandless magic, and Hermione was reading over Ron’s essay with a frown. 

“I mean, really, Ron, it’s like you tried to make this as incomprehensible as possible,” she chided, crossing off a line of the parchment with her wand.

“I may have dozed off a little when Snape was lecturing.” Ron threw a handful of Every Flavour Beans in his mouth and screwed up his face at the mix of flavors.

“Tastes like blueberries and socks.”

“That’s  _ disgusting _ .”

Harry was sitting on the windowsill, his knees tucked up to his chest. He hadn’t even begun his essay, although he had every intention of doing it when he had joined Ron and Hermione in the common room. But then a fourth-year had brought her record player down from her room and put on an old Muggle record from the seventies. Harry didn’t know the band name, but he recognized the sound of it. Sirius had played the album for a week straight over the summer after Lupin had found it in a box from their school days.

_ Won’t you tell me, where have all the good times gone…  _

Ginny came bounding down the staircase, skipping over to them and swiping the box of Beans from Ron’s hands. Harry turned back to the window.

“Don’t try the white ones. Not worth the risk,” Ron warned her. 

He could hear her pour some out of the container. 

“Ready to go?” she asked, through a mouthful of the candy. 

“And be done with this wretched essay? You don’t have to tell me twice..”

“Harry?” Ginny prompted. 

He turned. The three were watching him with expectant expressions. He tried to remember what they were supposed to be doing and drew a blank.

“Going to meet Neville in the library?” Hermione reminded him with a frown. “See how he’s holding up?”

“Right,” he said with a smile. He had no memory of them mentioning it. “You guys go ahead. I have to meet Dumbledore soon anyways.”

_ Let it be like yesterday, Please let me have happy days,  _ Bowie crooned on the stereo. 

Hermione smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Okay. Let us know how it goes after?”

Harry nodded and looked away before any of them could say anything further. He knew one day soon their silent agreement to ignore Harry’s moods wouldn’t hold forever; Hermione would stage an intervention before long. Or Ginny would just punch him on the shoulder and tell him to snap out of it. 

But he wasn’t ready for that day to be today: he had another thing to worry about. An hour later, Harry stood outside Dumbledore’s office wringing his hands uneasily. 

“Acid pops,” he said, and the gargoyle promptly leapt aside.

Dumbledore was waiting for him eagerly inside with his Pensieve set up on his desk.

“Harry,” he greeted him warmly. “I’m sure you have been wondering why I’ve called you here for this private meeting.” He gestured towards the Pensieve. “I don’t intend to keep you wondering any longer.”

Dumbledore turned towards a small vial on his desk, opening his mouth to speak, but Harry summoned all the courage he had and interjected:

“Actually, sir, there was something I wanted to talk to you about first.”

He waited for Dumbledore to turn back around.

“Certainly, Harry,” he said benignly, and waited.

Harry took a deep breath. On his perch, Fawkes was sleeping peacefully, and Harry stepped forward to stare at him rather than meet Dumbledore’s eyes.

Still keeping his eyes on the flicker of Fawkes’ golden tail, Harry said, “Sir, I hope that I haven’t disappointed you in any way.”

He hadn’t meant to say it, but he didn’t know how else to start. Behind him, Dumbledore’s robes rustled as he straightened.

“On the contrary, Harry,” Dumbledore said, surprise evident in his tone.

Harry turned back to look at the Headmaster. He felt very nervous, and very small, like he was a young boy again.

“Because I’ve always done everything you asked,” he continued. “Because, well, I was just a kid, and I barely understood what Voldemort was, and you always did your best to protect me.”

Confusion marred Dumbledore’s features. 

“I’m glad to hear you think so,” he said genuinely.

Harry exhaled. “But you can’t protect me,” he said. “Not anymore. You told me that I would have to be the one to kill Voldemort. That means you can’t stand in my way, as much as I might want you to.”

“I suppose that is true, Harry, although I too wish there was another way.”

“If it’s true,” Harry said, looking straight into Dumbledore’s eyes, “then I need you to stop lying to me.” 

There was surely a more diplomatic way of saying it, but the truth had just spilled out. Dumbledore’s eyebrows knitted together, his mouth drawn down in a frown, and the office was very quiet save for Phineas Nigelus’s shocked gasp.

“Insolent, arrogant little boy!” the portrait cried, but Dumbledore silenced him with a flick of his wrist.

“Harry,” he said, “I hope you will believe me when I say that I have never lied to you.”

“No, of course not,” Harry shot back. “You just omit. You just leave me in the dark for months and then call me when you need me. You let me waste away at the Dursley’s, and only give me riddles instead of answers, and ignore me when I tell you there’s a  _ Death Eater in my dorm room. _ ”

The look Dumbledore leveled at him now was eerily reminiscent of their exchange last spring, when he had calmly looked on as Harry tore apart his office. He still didn’t get it. He still had all the knowledge, all the power, and left Harry with nothing but his rage, gnawing a white-hot hole inside of him.

“I feared you might begin to resent me for these things, Harry,” Dumbledore finally said. “I don’t intend to justify the things that I have done, but I hope you can one day see that I was only ever doing what I thought best.”

Harry took a deep breath. He didn’t want to yell. It wouldn’t accomplish anything.

“I don’t resent you, sir,” he said, trying to backtrack. “But it is too much to ask of me, to face the most powerful dark wizard in history, all the while refusing to tell me the truth. What you know about Malfoy. Why you trust Snape. Why Voldemort’s killing curse forged a connection between us, and how I’ll ever be able to break it. I mean, you seem to have full faith that I will be the one to stop him, when the last time I faced him, I managed a measly  _ Expelliarmus! _ ”

“I understand your concern.” Dumbledore gestured towards the Pensieve. “I think what I intend to show you tonight might begin to explain—”

“No,” Harry interrupted him, emboldened by his anger. “No, I’m not doing this on your terms anymore. Either I’m not leaving this office until you sit me down and tell me everything you’re trying so desperately to keep from me, or…” 

Harry broke off. He didn’t quite know how to finish that sentence. Dumbledore was looking back at him like he hardly recognized the boy standing before him.

They gazed at each other in silence for a few, long moments.

“There are some answers, Harry,” Dumbledore said very softly, “that you would regret pushing me to give you once you heard them. I ask you to trust my judgement.”

Harry laughed. The sound was ragged and bitter. 

Of course he wasn’t going to change Dumbledore’s mind. He was only ever a pawn to him, a shiny weapon prophesied to end the war he had been fighting for decades. Did Dumbledore even see a person before him — a real person, flesh and blood — or just an idea?

“Then I’m not doing another damn thing for you. I’m not losing another  _ person  _ for you. So you just let me know when you’ve changed your mind.”

And with a last look at Dumbledore’s shocked expression, he stormed out of the office. 

~*~

Ron and Hermione were waiting for him, sitting as far away as possible from Blaise and Theo who were busy levitating the tables a few Gryffindor boys were using for homework — sending ink pots and parchment flying. But Harry didn’t slow as he barreled through the common room. He was too angry for words right now, and he didn’t have it in him to bear his friends’ shocked reactions to what he had just done. 

Just before he could reach the stairs, Katie Bell rounded the corner, her face lighting up.

“Harry!” she said, “Set a time for tryouts?” 

He stormed past her, catching the briefest glimpse of her crestfallen look. 

The dorm room was gloriously empty. He threw himself down on his bed and pulled his pillow over his head – as if that would somehow stop his raging thoughts — and when Ron came up to check on him, he feigned sleep.

But hours later he was still awake, tossing and turning restlessly. First he was too hot. Then when he kicked the blankets off, he started to shiver. And, even when he finally got comfortable, his thoughts raged on.

What was wrong with him? He hardly recognized himself, as if it was someone else who had stood in Dumbledore’s office and said those things. He couldn’t believe he had really done it.

But how could he regret it when he had meant every word? Yes, he had been insolent and arrogant as Phineas had accused, but why did Dumbledore deserve his respect? Everyone followed him blindly, refusing to speak a word against him. The only person who had ever shared Harry’s scorn was Sirius.

Sirius. His fury at Dumbledore had distracted his mind from its usual nightly torments, but now the memories rushed in. Tonight it was Christmas at Grimmauld Place. It had been a good memory at the time, as good a Christmas as anyone could expect under the circumstances, but now he could only think about how happy Sirius had been to have a house full of company after Dumbledore had left him alone and useless. How he had paced the halls throwing tinsels over the staircases and whistling Christmas carols. 

It was his last Christmas, and he hadn’t even known it. 

Then they’d all gone back to Hogwarts, leaving him alone once again. Nothing but the ghosts of his childhood home to keep him company. His mother’s screaming portrait, Kreacher’s skulking frame. The last months of his life spent in misery. 

With a groan, Harry threw the covers off and sat up. He shouldn’t have even bothered trying to sleep, not when he was already so worked up. These days, the only peace he could get was when he laid down and passed out from sheer exhaustion.

He didn’t know what time it was. There was no longer any light coming in through the window, and Ron had been snoring soundly for what felt like forever. 

Sliding out of bed, Harry approached the barrier of his enchantments and felt them gave way to him like water. Once he saw that the three Slytherin curtains were tightly drawn, he stepped through and headed for the bathroom.

When he pushed open the bathroom door he was momentarily blinded by light. He blinked furiously against the onslaught, and when his eyes finally adjusted, he saw a ball of warm, yellow flames magically hovering in the center of the room. 

And, at the far end of the bathroom, leaning casually against the window, was Draco Malfoy.

_ Great _ . 

Harry had done a heroic job ignoring him so far this year, but now Malfoy watched him steadily, looking bleary. Out the open window he held a cigarette between his fingers, the end burning.

Harry didn’t have time to react to that before he caught Malfoy’s expression. His jaw was clenched, his eyes darting across Harry’s face, and there was a rigid set to his shoulders. 

Harry snorted. He threw a hand through his hair and walked over to the sink, ignoring the way Malfoy’s eyes tracked the movement.

A few handfuls of cold water over his face and Harry was wide awake. When he looked up in the mirror, he could see Malfoy still watching him over his shoulder. 

“I’m not here for you,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. Because really. Harry wasn’t going to attack him in the bathroom at two a.m., outnumbered by Slytherins ten feet away.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Malfoy said, bringing the cigarette to his lips. He took a long drag and then smirked through an exhale of smoke. “Nightmares got too scary?”

But he was still watching Harry with that strange look on his face. He suddenly realized that, from Malfoy’s perspective, Harry’s behavior was quite strange. He had found out that Malfoy was a Death Eater, and done absolutely nothing about it. 

Malfoy was  _ worried _ . 

Harry turned, leaning back against the edge of the sink and feeling a little drunk on this new power imbalance. It had always been Malfoy who was so sure in his dominance over all of them. But now his fate rested in Harry’s hands, and he knew it. 

“Scared I’ll out you, Malfoy?”

He scoffed. “As if anyone would believe Lying Potter.” 

“Want to bet?”

Malfoy huffed and looked away. But Harry wasn’t going to let him off so easily. 

“Why not flaunt it?” he pressed, shrugging casually at the suggestion. “Shouldn’t you be proud to display the  _ Dark Lord’s _ favor?”

Malfoy turned back to him, his eyes burning. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, violently stamping out the cigarette on the windowsill. It crumpled and rolled, still burning. “You don’t know a damn thing.”

Harry smirked. “All right, Malfoy.”

“ _ All right? _ ” Malfoy repeated in disbelief, his brows furrowing as if Harry was a problem he just couldn’t figure out.

“Yeah,” he said, pushing off of the sink and crossing the distance between them. For a moment he let himself appreciate the way Malfoy stiffened at his approach, straightening flat up against the wall. Then Harry picked up the half-lit cigarette and stuck it between his lips. He didn’t even know why. He felt insane. 

“All right,” he repeated, and then he walked out. 

After that, he slept like a baby.

~*~

The next morning in Charms, more himself again, he felt guilty and embarrassed for avoiding his friends last night. In between furiously scribbling out his Defense essay whenever Flitwick turned his back, he recounted his disastrous meeting with Dumbledore.

Ron and Hermione stared at him in utter disbelief. 

“Wow, Harry,” Hermione whispered after a moment, and surprisingly enough she sounded a little proud. “I mean, you could have toned it back a little bit, but it’s not like you weren’t justified.”

Harry looked up, stopping writing in the middle of his discussion of the mind/wand connection. 

“You think so?” he asked, because he had begun replaying the encounter on a loop in his brain, wondering if he had made a terrible mistake.

“Sure, mate,” Ron added. “After all, you are the Chosen One. Least he could do is let you know exactly what you were chosen for.”

Harry rolled his eyes at the term, and then ducked his head as Flitwick’s narrowed gaze landed on three of them.

“A little more focus on turning your vinegar into wine, students,” he announced to the class, “then on chattering amongst yourself.” 

Pansy turned and smirked at them. 

But Harry really did feel better at his friend’s words. With a guilty start, he realized that he had barely talked to them at all the past few days. This morning he’d skipped breakfast, unable to pull himself out of bed. He stared at the gold trim of his bed curtains until he was going to be late for Herbology, and even then he could barely muster the energy to move. The simplest things seemed to take everything out of him these days.

And even when he  _ was _ with them, he usually let their conversations flow in through one ear and out the other, rarely contributing anything. He was certain they’d noticed, but they weathered his silence dutifully. 

As he finished the conclusion of his essay, he vowed to pull himself together for them. After all, he had just lost his biggest ally by turning on Dumbledore. His friends were all he had left. They’d been at his side through it all, and he knew they would face whatever the war brought next together, too.

“How was Neville, by the way?” he asked, trying to convince himself he really cared about the answer.

“Well,” Ron said, considering. “Things actually aren’t as bad in the dungeons. If you think about it, we got the worst of them. Crabbe and Goyle don’t have two brain cells between the two of them.”

“He did say that Tracey Davis keeps Vanishing his things,” Hermione added, “but it really is nowhere as bad as what’s going on in the Tower.”

Harry nodded convincingly as she continued to summarize what Neville had told them. Her words blurred away into a meaningless jumble as he stared at the vial of vinegar like he could charm in through willpower alone. 

When had everything become so hard? Even now, he could barely muster up the energy to focus on his friend’s words. He didn’t know why he was acting so out of character, blowing off the people he cared about and blowing up at the smallest things. 

Or last night, in the bathroom with Malfoy. What the hell had he been on? For whatever reason, Malfoy had left all of them alone, too busy being brooding and introspective these days to cause any trouble. They would all regret it if Harry was stupid enough to provoke him into his old ways.

He turned over his shoulder to look at him. In the back row, alone at his table, Malfoy was wordlessly tapping his wand against his vial, his chin resting in his hand with a bored expression on his face.

With each tap, the liquid turned from water to vinegar and back again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed! I know we're a bit slow going right now, but I'm just trying to get things established. Promise things will pick up soon! Also, starting next week I'll be posting Mondays and Fridays.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts below!!


	3. Chapter 3

He arrived back to the common room after class to find a note waiting for him. Harry reread it so many times he could recite it from memory.

_ Harry, _

_ I’m all but cleared out of Grimmauld Place. There are some things Sirius had left for you here that I thought I might show you. Let me know when you can come by.  _

_ Remus _

He’d forgotten that Lupin had been staying there, and he regretted not reaching out to the man earlier. Harry had no intention of moving into his newly inherited manor. He certainly didn’t want Lupin to feel like he had to leave. Although, he probably wanted to get out of there anyways for his own reasons… 

It was kind of Remus to think of him, but the thought of going back to Grimmauld Place, of seeing whatever it was Sirius had left for him, was impossible. 

A hand fell on his shoulder, and he startled. He hadn’t even heard her approach, but now Hermione was sitting next to him with a sad, understanding smile on her face. 

“Oh, Harry,” she said softly. 

He crumpled up the piece of parchment and shoved it to the bottom of his bag. 

“It’s fine.” He cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the sudden tightness. “I’ll go next weekend or something.” 

Hermione studied his face with a knowing look in her eyes. 

“You can talk to us, you know that, right?” she said.

“I know,” he said. 

But Hermione wasn’t convinced. She looked away nervously, biting her lip, but when she spoke again it was more forceful.

“We’re just worried about you is all. I mean, I know this summer was rough for you, and you have every right to feel however you do, but we just want to make sure you’re going to be okay. I mean, Harry, Sirius wouldn’t want—”

“Don’t,” he spit out through gritted teeth. “Don’t even go there.” 

Hermione looked away, her cheeks red. Then she exhaled, and looked back at him, and placed her hand over his. It was warm and soft.

“I love you,” she said. 

“I know,” was all he could get out, because suddenly he was blinking away tears. He almost wished he had let her continue rambling on, talking about what Sirius would or wouldn’t want from him, because this quiet compassion was far harder to bear.

The past few months were crashing down on him, a staggering weight of grief. Every time he blinked, he saw Sirius’ bright smile; with every beat of his heart, he heard his laugh in his ears. And he was gone. Harry had been waiting all this time to feel like his old self again, but Sirius Black was dead —  _ dead,  _ he thought again, because he had never let himself say the word — and Harry was never going to be himself again. 

And it seemed so unthinkable, so totally ridiculous. And yet, despite the past months of agonizing grief, a part of him still never moved on from thinking that he was going to come back through the veil. Somehow, he would come back. Because Sirius always found a way.

_ He’s dead,  _ he thought, struggling to draw in a full breath, the weight of those words hitting him like a curse.  _ Oh, god, he actually  _ died.

He shrugged out of Hermione’s grasp, pulling his hand away and standing up. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but he could barely feel his own face, and had no idea if he managed it.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said, the words a soundless roar in his ears.

He heard her say something distantly, but he didn’t wait around. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, his palms slick with moisture. Heat radiated from the core of his body; he was on fire, he was collapsing in on himself. Wrenching his tie unloose around his neck, Harry wondered if he was dying. His feet felt like blocks of concrete and he could barely see through the tears in his eyes. 

And then a strong hand grabbed his bicep, wrenching him to a stop. The shock of it interrupted Harry’s frantic breathing, and Harry felt fresh air desperately fill his lungs. The weight on his chest lessened, and he blinked, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

Somehow he had ended up in a fourth floor corridor, crowded with students leaving class. And it was Cormac McLaggen’s hand wrapped tight around his upper arm. He was looking at Harry expectantly, and Harry realized he had been saying something.

“I’m sorry, what?” Harry said, and he barely recognized the gravelly sound of his own voice. 

“I  _ said _ —” Cormac rolled his eyes— “are you going to do tryouts this weekend or what? I’ve been hounding McGonagall about it for days.”

“Yeah,” Harry bit out, his head pounding, “um, I don’t know yet.” 

Cormac threw up his hands. “I mean, come on man. Zacharias already scheduled  _ his _ tryouts and I’m pretty sure that Slytherin bloke did too. And I’ve been practicing all summer, Potter—”

The throbbing in Harry’s head was progressively worsening. It felt like his brain was expanding inside his skull, pressing against his temples and trying to burst out.    


Cormac was still droning on: “If you’re not even going to give me a shot at making the team, then I’ll go over your head. I’d hate to do it, but really, you have to—”

Harry was really fucking tired of people talking to him about Quidditch.

“Cormac,” Harry interrupted. Black spots were clouding over his vision. “Would you please shut the fuck up?”

Cormac’s words died off, his mouth hanging open, his face blank with shock. Then the life flickered back into it, and he was taking a step towards Harry, his face murderous.

“ _ Excuse me? _ ”

“I don’t give a fuck about tryouts. Go blabber to someone else.” 

“But… you’re the Captain,” he said dumbly, looking at Harry as if he’d grown three heads.

Harry closed his eyes. If this conversation lasted any longer, he was going to ram his fist into Cormac’s face. Without another word, he turned and walked away.

_ When are tryouts? _ Harry scoffed bitterly. Didn’t anyone realize how close Harry was to falling apart? Were his friends the only ones who realized he was barely keeping it together?

Without even consciously thinking about it, he found himself outside McGonagall’s office. The pounding in his head subsided as he took long, slow breaths, and once his hands were no longer trembling, he knocked on the door.

“Come in,” came McGonagall’s voice.

Inside, McGonagall was sitting at her desk, stirring a cup of tea with her wand and grading papers with her quill in the other. When she looked up and saw Harry standing in the doorway, her eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Mr. Potter,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

Harry stood frozen in the doorway for a second ( _ was he really doing this? _ he thought) then he walked forward to put his bag on the table and dug around until he found the small gold pin.

He dropped it in front of McGonagall on the desk. She looked up from the badge to Harry’s face, her brows furrowed.

“I don’t want it,” he said, embarrassed by the rough edge to his voice. “Give it to someone else.” 

“Mr. Potter, I don’t understand…”

“I really, really don’t want to be Quidditch captain,” he said as forcefully as he could, trying to make it clear. He didn’t want to have to explain it. He didn’t want to have to say that since June, nothing mattered to him anymore.

McGonagall slowly removed her glasses before looking up at him. 

“Potter, this is very unlike you.” 

“Well, maybe I’m not the same person I used to be,” Harry replied, figuring that after everything he was entitled to be a little melodramatic.

McGonagall opened her mouth like she was going to argue with him, but then, very deliberately, she set down her quill on her desk and nodded her head.

“That is perfectly understandable,” she said. “Why don’t you sit down for some tea?”

But her expression was eerily reminiscent to Hermione’s, that soft, sympathizing look, and Harry was already stumbling back a step. If she made him stay, made him talk about the feelings that were welling up within him, he would surely lose it. 

“I have Potions,” he ground out. 

“I’m sure Professor Slughorn would understand that you were with me.” 

But when she saw that Harry was making no move to sit, she only sighed.

“I know you’ve gone through a lot, Potter. More than I could ever imagine. But I think, in the long run, giving up the things that matter to you will only make these losses worse.”

“But that’s the thing, Professor,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he even realized what he was saying. “They don’t matter to me. Not anymore. Why should I waste my time flying around on a broomstick, playing silly games and watching the school cheer like it matters who wins the Quidditch Cup?” He could hear the scorn in his own voice, the raw emotion forming a lump in his throat, but he couldn’t stop himself from continuing. “What do I care about NEWTs and Apparition and the stupid Slug Club? Why should I give a  _ shit _ about a future that I probably won’t even live to see? And for that matter, why should I bring all my friends down with me!? The best thing anyone can do for themselves now is to  _ let me go _ .”

In the quiet that followed, broken only by the sound of his ragged breathing, Harry felt a little embarrassed by his outburst. This was offset slightly by the look McGonagall was leveling at him. It wasn’t anger for his shouting, as he might expect. 

It was perfect understanding.

“Harry,” she said, very quietly. “Please stay for some tea.”

“I have Potions,” he said again tonelessly, and then he turned and walked out.

~*~

By dinner the whole school knew. McGonagall, seeming to understand there would be no changing his mind, had given the captaincy to Ginny. Harry thought it was the best news he’d heard all year. 

His friends, naturally, were horrified. 

“You’re mental. Absolutely mental.” Ron shook his head as he poured gravy over his plate. Harry figured it was best to let him get it all out. “I mean, you do realize this is what you’ve dreamed about since you first sat on a broom, no?”

But Hermione was looking down at her salad with a frown. Aside from her first shocked exclamation, she hadn’t given Harry any grief about it at all, likely knowing better than Ron why Harry had done it. 

A boiled potato bounced off the side of Harry’s head before he could respond. Blaise Zabini was laughing at him from the other end of the table as Theo cheered for his perfect aim.

“McGonagall kick you off the team, did she?” Zabini jeered. “Finally realized your head was too big to keep a broomstick afloat?”

“Nah,” Harry shot back with a shrug, “it was my dick that was weighing me down, really.” 

“Harry, no!” Ginny squealed, hitting him on the shoulder even as she roared with delight. Ron tilted his cup in Harry’s direction in some semblance of a toast, chuckling goodnaturedly.

The Slytherins began a dramatic reenactment of Harry’s worst Quidditch moments. Pansy flailed her arm bonelessly, recalling second year, as Theo pretended to cough up the Snitch. 

It was the longest he had ever paid any attention to the Slytherin side of their new table, and for the first time he realized that he rarely saw Malfoy there. Rarely saw him with his friends at all.

Harry filed that info away for later. Just because he was angry with Dumbledore didn’t mean the older man wasn’t right: he was uniquely situated to keep an eye on Malfoy this year. 

Harry turned back to his dinner, pushing it around his plate rather than eating it as the Slytherins — having exhausted Harry’s Quidditch career — began to mock him more generally. Only when Pansy began to cry, “Mummy! Mummy, save me!” did he grip his fork a little tighter, forcing himself not to react.

“Blaise, you idiot, not on my tits!” Ginny shouted back, pitching her voice up a few octaves to mock Pansy. “I told you to tell me when you were close!” 

Hermione kicked Ginny under the table, but Harry almost choked on his peas he was laughing so hard. Pansy’s face was bright red, and she glared at Ginny with murder in her eyes. Now the Slytherins were staring in shock at the two of them, and no longer looking at Harry.

“You’re brilliant, Gin,” he said. She bumped her shoulder against his. 

“You never told me that story,” Hermione said with a laugh.

Ginny shuddered dramatically. “I should have Obliviated it from my memory a long time ago.” 

~*~

While his friends were sitting in the Great Hall making fun of Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, it seemed, was nowhere. On the walk back to the common room, Harry hung back behind the group, scouring the Marauders’ Map. He couldn’t help it; once he’d realized just how little he saw Malfoy these days, he couldn’t shake the urge to check on the boy’s whereabouts. But Malfoy had disappeared from the Map entirely. He had been in last period Defense, so Harry knew that he hadn’t left the grounds. 

“Say,” he wondered as he caught up to his friends. “Why do you think someone wouldn’t appear on the Map?” 

The group, probably just happy that Harry was talking to them, considered the question.

“Maybe there’s a spell that would disguise you?” Hermione mused.

“Yeah, but if they didn’t even know about the Map, let’s say.” 

“I don’t know. It’s a flawless piece of magic, truly.”

Harry made a noncommittal noise. Clearly it wasn’t perfect. 

Back in the common room, a young Slytherin boy was clutching at his nose, blood spurting from between his fingers. Three Gryffindors were standing around his crumpled form, patting one of their friends on the back.

“Real brave, four against one,” Ginny grumbled, and Ron shot her a betrayed look.

“He was, like, eleven years old!” she defended.

“Still a Slytherin.” 

Hermione bit her lip as she watched the scene, but she didn’t intervene. They knew that whoever was the first one to break, whether it was a Slytherin or Gryffindor who first went crying to a teacher, would bring down the wrath of the whole house down on them. 

After the attackers had left, the Slytherin boy valiantly regained his feet, wiping away his tears. With a grimace, he turned his wand on himself, muttering something about healing spells under his breath.

“ _ Episkey,”  _ Hermione whispered, pointing the very tip of her wand out from beneath her robes.

Ron snorted. “Traitors. Both of you.” 

“Next time, he’ll learn to punch back,” Harry piped in. 

The girls looked at him in disbelief. 

“We were eleven, once, too,” he said, a tad defensive. “Didn’t stop the Slytherins from calling you a you-know-what and you a blood traitor.” 

“Oh, you’re all as bad as the other,” Hermione said in exasperation before she plopped down on the sofa. 

Harry smiled and pulled out the map again, unfolding it on the table.

“Help me look for Malfoy,” he said. 

“Is that who you meant? Has he been giving you trouble?” Hermione asked.

“No, not really.”

“Me either. It’s weird right?” 

“I don’t know,” Ginny said, lifting her legs up onto the couch and resting them over Hermione’s lap. “If I were a Death Eater, I probably wouldn’t want to call too much attention to myself. I mean, what if Dumbledore found out?”

Harry snorted. “Yeah. Little does he know Dumbledore practically gave it a stamp of approval.” 

“Fucking bonkers still, if you ask me.” Ron shook his head. 

They scoured the map in silence. Then, with a start, Ron pointed. 

“There! His name just appeared, it wasn’t there before.”

He was standing in the middle of a seventh floor corridor. A corridor they knew well.

“The Room of Requirement,” Harry said. “Of course. It wouldn’t show up on here if he didn’t want it to. What’s he doing in there, though?” 

“Nothing good, I’d wager.” 

The four of them shared an uneasy glance.

~*~

Harry was doing the responsible thing. This was purely for the greater good, he told himself as he threw the Cloak over his body and slipped out of bed. Ron was sleeping soundly, enjoy his weekend lie-in. But Harry had figured the only way to know why Malfoy was behaving so strangely would be to see what he was up to for himself.

That didn’t quite justify why he was up at eight a.m. on a Saturday morning, getting ready to follow Malfoy down to his defense trial with Snape. It would be pretty straightforward, and if Malfoy was going to get up to anything, it wouldn’t be in front of a bunch of professors. Strictly speaking, there was no need for Harry to be there.

So, Harry was curious. That wasn’t a crime. He thought of Malfoy effortlessly charming his vinegar into water, or pulling the pink mist into his wand on the train. Last year, Malfoy’s glass had shattered doing a simple levitation charm in his OWL. Sure, he had been distracted by Harry at the time, and sure he had always made decent marks, but Harry couldn’t help but feel that magic had never come this easily to Malfoy before. It was like it was effortless now, almost  _ boring _ . 

Not to mention that Neville was scheduled to go right before him, and Harry really wanted to see Snape’s shock when he saw just how competent a fighter Neville had become after his year in the DA.

They were using the Great Hall for the trials. Harry perched on one of the windowsills and arranged his Cloak to make sure it covered his body completely. At the far side of the hall, Snape had cast a cushioning charm over the floor and was positioning a large black box at one end of the mats. 

The other Heads of Houses were there as well, talking amongst themselves on the platform. Likely to ensure that no one could accuse Snape of an unfair bias. Harry smiled at the thought. He suddenly wished he’d brought a chocolate frog or something to snack on while he watched the show. 

At eighty-thirty on the dot Neville walked into the Hall, clutching his wand in front of him. When he looked away from Snape to see the other Professors behind him, he seemed to release a deep breath.

“Mr. Longbottom,” Snape intoned once Neville reached him, reading from a piece of parchment. “Today we will evaluate your defensive skills to best place you for the workshop. You will not be dueling a real wizard; rather, a simulated fighter. In the first minute of the trial, you may cast any defensive spells to protect yourself against its attack, and any offensive spells in an attack of your own. When the minute is up, then your aim is to disarm or disable the dueler as quickly as possible.” 

Neville nodded at the instructions, looking ready. Harry resisted the urge to cheer him on.

“Take your mark,” Snape commanded. “And Merlin help you,” he muttered snidely.

Neville ignored the comment, walking over to the mark in the floor to stand opposite from the black box. With a flick of Snape’s wand, the box unfolded, and a ghostly black shadow emerged from the box. It just barely resembled a dementor, although the shadow dueler was just flat grey smoke, with none of the Dementor’s soul-sucking unpleasantness.

It raised its shadow wand and fired. 

The next minute was a simple, skillful duel. If Harry absently wondered whether the shadow dueler was firing real spells, he didn’t have to wonder long as a Knockback Jinx took Neville off his feet. But Neville rallied; that was the only spell of the dueler’s that landed, as Neville deftly deflected every other one. And when the timer on the wall chimed, marking one minute, it took Neville only fourteen more seconds to disarm his opponent.

Neville heaved in breath, shaking out his wand hand. Harry was grinning so hard his face hurt.

“Adequate,” Snape said, over the rest of the other Professors’ polite applause. “Dismissed.” 

The doors to the Great Hall were only closed a minute before they opened again. Draco Malfoy strode confidently into the room, holding his wand casually at his side like he didn’t have a care in the world. 

Snape repeated the same instructions, minus the snide comment he had given Neville, and Malfoy took his mark with perfect ease, adopting a defensive stance. The shadow once again emerged from its box.

Something was immediately different about this match. It hardly made sense that Snape would have had the shadow go easy on Neville, but there was no denying that it was now far more aggressive, bursting from the box and immediately firing a string of curses at Malfoy. The shadows whorled, dodging and hexing, as Malfoy rapidly deflected the attacks. 

It was such a marked change from the last duel that Harry spent the first few seconds of the match watching the shadow dueler, amazed at its speed and aggression. But then, as the duel got underway, his attention turned to Malfoy — and held. 

Draco Malfoy fought like he lived: arrogant and irreverent. But it wasn’t so much his style of fighting — distinctive and fearless as it was — that had Harry leaning forward from his perch, his breath coming out in a rush, his eyes bulging wide. 

It was the fact that it was, save for Dumbledore and Voldemort’s battle in the Department of Mysteries, the single most skilled display of fighting he had seen in his life.

The dueling club, the DA’s defensive work – it all seemed like a joke, like child’s play compared to this. Dumbledore and Voldemort had fought desperately, and Harry had been scared for his life at the time. But now he could sit back and watch as Malfoy effortlessly parried the shadow dueler’s attacks, swiping them aside as if they were nothing even as the dueler became more and more vicious.

A bright flash of red light shot from Malfoy’s wand, a well-timed  _ Stupefy  _ that hit the dueler squarely, but Harry never heard him say the incantation. No, he hadn’t said anything at all, because as Harry dropped from his perch and took a few, dumbstruck steps towards the battle, Harry saw that Malfoy had stopped saying any spells at all, and was now firing strings of hexes at the dueler with wordless magic. 

It was stunning.

He knew that to get this good, Malfoy would have had to practice. And not like Harry himself had done — picking up spells and defenses here and there from the mentors in his life, relying on intuition and adrenaline when it came time to use them. No, Malfoy would have had to commit himself to it, studying defensive texts far beyond his year, practicing jinxes and hexes for long, hard hours. He could hardly imagine Draco dedicating himself to anything so seriously. Had someone been teaching him? Or had he done this all on his own? And why in Merlin’s name did he feel the need to? He wasn’t the one being chased by Death Eaters and Dark Lords… 

Harry couldn’t help but look on in awe. The timer chimed overhead, and Harry was too busy watching Malfoy cast the most powerful  _ Reducto  _ he had ever seen to fully notice the flash of green light burst from the dueler’s wand, before Malfoy’s reductor curse shattered it into a pool of ashy smoke.

Malfoy was gasping for breath, the hair around his forehead darkened by sweat. On the platform, the Hogwarts Professors were speechless. 

“I—” McGonagall started, staring at Malfoy with total uncomprehension. Then her eyes darted towards what was left of the shadow, and she said in horror, “That wasn’t—?”

“No, of course not,” Snape interrupted her cooly. His gaze hadn’t left Malfoy once, watching him steadily with some undefined emotion marring his features. “It seems the dueler recognized Malfoy’s… extreme proficiency, and matched his skill level. Well done. You are dismissed.” 

It took another five minutes before Harry could move from his spot, staring blankly into space as he tried to make sense of the single most impressive display of magic he had ever seen. 

Inexplicably, it felt like his entire understanding of the universe had just shifted. 

~*~

Harry’s own trial was uneventful. The dueler had reverted back to its original level, and he was able to disarm it in a mere four seconds with a perfect  _ Expelliarmus.  _

He’d followed Malfoy around under the Cloak after to see what he got up to, but he only went up to the Astronomy Tower and let his long legs dangle over the edge as he repeatedly Vanished and Conjured the metal guard railings. Each time they vanished, he pitched forward towards the edge, and each time they reappeared, they narrowly stopped him from falling off the side to a violent death. Harry wondered if this was Malfoy’s attempt at a slow suicide.

But at noon he’d had to report for his own trial, and he was forced to leave Malfoy to his own devices. He sent up a silent prayer that his trial wouldn’t be interrupted by the resounding  _ thud  _ of Malfoy’s body falling seventy feet. 

None of it made sense. If Malfoy had always been that good, he would have noticed, wouldn’t he? Or someone would have — someone in the Order, Dumbledore, even? If Voldemort had a dueler like that on his side, the Order would definitely want to know. 

Maybe that’s how he had convinced Voldemort to let him join up. The thought made Harry sick. Had he trained for that purpose alone? To impress Voldemort with his talent so he could become the youngest Death Eater in history? 

It just didn’t make sense. Admittedly Harry was only thinking about it rationally half the time, trying to gauge Malfoy’s motives. The other time the duel was replaying on a loop through his mind — the effortless flick of Malfoy’s wrist, the implacable concentration, the ease with which he cast his spells — as if wandless magic was as simple as breathing, when even Hermione hadn’t been able to do it yet. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. If it weren’t so horrifying, it would almost be… beautiful. 

It was madness, and yet undoubtedly, there it was unfurling in his chest: the first stirrings of envy. Or was it longing? Awe? Harry wanted to be that good. Malfoy was wildly, wildly better than him, and Harry suspected that kind of skill could never be taught.

Picking a fight with Malfoy seemed like a worse idea than ever. 

And yet, though his head was spinning with everything he had seen, he told his friends none of it. He didn’t even know why. There was a part of him (something he would never admit to or even allow himself to fully think) that wanted to keep the memory private out of a weird sense of reverence. Trying to describe what he had seen would cheapen it somehow. There were no words for that kind of skill. There was no way to recount what had been a once-in-a-lifetime sight.

Instead of having to unpack all of that, Harry told himself he wanted to sit on the information for a bit. After all, it raised too many questions, and he had no answers to give them. He didn’t want them to worry about Malfoy murdering them all in his sleep, or leading Voldemort’s Death Eater army. And they might try to stop him, encouraging him to leave such someone so obviously dangerous alone.

Which was probably the smart choice. There was just no way in hell that was what Harry was going to do.

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were scheduled for the next day, so they were eagerly awaiting his run-down. He prattled on about insignificant details, explaining the strange magic of the shadow dueller, how all the Heads of Houses would watch. Hermione had her copy of  _ Confronting the Faceless  _ open on her lap. She was on “Chapter Seventeen: Advanced Theory of Unforgivable Curses” already, even though Snape had only assigned up to “Chapter Three: Implementing the Principles of Wandless Magic.” 

“I should have started earlier,” she moaned, frantically flipping the pages. “There’s no way I can read up to “Twenty Three: A Brief Practical History of Dueling” tonight, not with my Arithmancy assignment!” 

“Hermione,” Harry laughed, “it’s a minute long duel. You could have done it second year — in your sleep, too. Do your Arithmancy,” he encouraged, because she was biting her lip and looking conflicted.

“I guess the DA prepared us well,” she admitted hesitantly. “Although I’m sure I’ve forgotten everything by now. Oh god, I’m going to be dreadful, I know it—”

Harry was distracted from Hermione’s groaning by the sight of a pale head in his periphery. Blaise heralded Malfoy from the corner of the common room where he was playing a round of Exploding Snap with a fifth year. From his side of the room, Harry couldn’t hear Malfoy’s response, but he saw him quickly shoot Blaise down and turn instead for the boy’s stairwell with a surreptitious look in each direction over his shoulder.

Harry stood. Whatever his friends had been saying died off as they looked up at him in surprise.

“I’ll be back,” he said, turning for the stairs.

“Is that a good idea?” Ron said, looking at the spot where Malfoy had just disappeared. 

Harry shrugged with a grin. “Probably not.”

Once he was out of view on the stairs, Harry threw on his Cloak and scaled the steps quickly to ensure Malfoy didn’t shut him out of the bedroom. He slipped into the room just behind Malfoy and jumped out of the way as he shut and locked the door behind him. 

Malfoy eyed the door skeptically. Then he cast a few silencing charms. 

Yes. This was going to be good. 

Malfoy crossed the room and kneeled before the fire. Harry edged as close as he dared, standing over Malfoy’s shoulder so he’d be able to hear the conversation.

After a minute, Narcissa Malfoy’s voice drifted out of the flames.

“Draco,” she said in a rush of breath, the word coming out like a fervent prayer. “Can I speak freely?”

“Yes,” Draco said. “Can I? 

“Yes.” Then, after the briefest hesitation: “He’s left, for now.” 

Harry could guess the  _ he  _ they were referring to. He leaned closer.

“You look tired, my little dove,” she sighed. When Draco responded, it was the softest Harry had ever heard his voice. 

“You too, Mum. Are you getting any sleep at all?” 

“Here and there. Don’t worry about me, now, Draco. You have to think of yourself this year. Only yourself.”

“I know,” he said tersely, and then he gasped at something Harry couldn’t see. “Your face, Mum!” 

“Hush now, it’s nothing.” 

Malfoy’s hands clenched into fists where they rested against his thighs. “It’s not nothing.”

“Don’t you start. You do your duty, and I’ll do mine.”

“ _ Duty,”  _ Malfoy repeated, scoffing.

“Tell me how it’s going,” she pressed. 

“Dumbledore knows. He has to know. At Snape’s defense trials, the stupid dueling thing…” he stopped and seemed to reconsider his words. “It was more intense than I thought it would be.” 

“What does that mean?” came Narcissa’s reply. 

“I don’t know. I had to fight against it — all the Professors were stunned. Now they all know I can fight. Snape told me he’ll take care of it, but it’s not like he can  _ Obliviate  _ them.” Draco huffed, ending his rant. When he spoke again, his voice was weaker. “Do you think Snape will tell…  _ him?” _

“I don’t know,” Narcissa said quietly. “If he’s loyal, he should.”

There was an uneasy silence. 

“If Severus said he would handle it... ”

“Yeah. Like he really gives a shit.” 

“Watch your tongue. And don’t brush this off,” Narcissa scolded, her voice intense. “You have no choice but to trust him. And if Dumbledore really does know, you’d be lucky if death was all that came out of it.” 

Malfoy lifted a hand from his lap to the edge of the fireplace to steady himself. It was trembling. When he spoke his voice was so quiet that Harry had to lean even closer to hear. 

“What am I supposed to do, Mum?”

“You know what you have to do,” she spit back. Then, softer, desperately: “I forgive you, Draco. I forgive you for whatever you have to do for this family, including this. Nothing will change. But if you fail…” she trailed off. 

“I know,” he said. He sounded very small. “I’ll find a way.”

Then he took a deep breath and recomposed himself. “Will you be okay?” 

“Always, my love.” 

“I love you,” he murmured.

“Be strong, Draco.”

And then Malfoy pulled his head from the flame and sat back against his heels, staring into the flames despondently. 

Harry was reeling. He supposed he knew this already: Voldemort had tasked him with something. And Malfoy was terribly afraid that Dumbledore would find out. Whatever it was, it was horrible enough that Draco Malfoy, one of the worst people he knew, was hesitant to do it. 

He ran through the conversation again. Malfoy was afraid of Voldemort, that much was clear. But he had always seemed to be afraid of his father to some degree too, and that never stopped him from doing what he said or trying to please him.

A small sound broke Harry’s thoughts. When he looked down at Malfoy, with a shock so huge it seemed to root him to the spot, he saw that — helplessly, silently — Malfoy was crying. 

Alone, in a Silenced dorm room, Malfoy was actually crying. Harry couldn’t deny that the emotion was genuine. For whatever reason, Malfoy really didn’t want to do this. Or maybe he did, and he was afraid of doing it anyways. 

Harry let the Cloak drop to his feet.

Malfoy shot up in the next moment, his eyes nearly bulging from his head, instantly sobered. For a second he seemed to fumble for his wand, but then he disregarded it in favor of lunging for Harry, grabbing him around the collar and slamming him back against the wall.

“ _ What the fuck are you doing? _ ” Malfoy seethed, his hands tightening around Harry’s neck.

His face was only a few inches away, and Harry could see the desperate glint in Malfoy’s eyes. His breathing was coming in short, rapid bursts, and his fingers were still shaking where they clutched Harry’s neck.

Draco Malfoy was terrified.

He took a breath and some of that wild emotion disappeared behind his cool mask. 

“Quidditch got too boring, so your new hobby is stalking me?” he snarled.

And Harry didn’t buy it for a moment. He had overheard his entire conversation, and they both knew it, and Draco Malfoy was terrified. 

There was something dangerous and unpredictable in his eyes. For the briefest moment, Harry wondered if he had misjudged him, if he had made a terrible mistake.

_ Don’t be daft,  _ he told himself.  _ This is Malfoy. The king of cowards. _

Harry schooled his face into a neutral expression and roughly shoved Malfoy away. He stumbled back a few steps, watching Harry steadily.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Harry said. He didn’t know which of his theories was right — reluctant Death Eater? under duress? desperate to please Voldemort and ascend the ranks? — so he had to pick one and run with it, hoping Malfoy would reveal something.

Malfoy’s lip curled up in a nasty expression. “Is that so? Pray tell, what have I done this time?”

“Your little display today at the defense trials. Just had to show off didn’t you?”

Malfoy’s expression darkened. If Harry had any self-preservation instincts left, he would be scared now. As it were, he was just glad he was hitting a nerve.

“So you are stalking me,” Malfoy growled, taking a measured step closer.

Harry shrugged. “Call it what you want. Doesn’t change the fact that you just showed our professors that you're the most skilled fighter they’ve ever seen. If that gets back to Voldemort, he’ll never let you go.”

Shock cleared Malfoy’s features for a second, before that genuine emotion was replaced by his affected irritation. 

“In case it slipped your attention,  _ Potter _ ,” he spit out, “that thing was attacking me.”

“Well spotted, Malfoy. That’s kind of the whole point.”

“I mean  _ for real _ ,  _ you blithering idiot!” _

Harry paused. That definitely was one way to characterize it. There was no denying that the dueller had gone after Malfoy with much more intensity than Neville or himself. But it surely wasn’t intending to do him serious harm, was it?

But then he thought of McGonagall’s shock, the way Snape had shot her down before she could finish her sentence. Malfoy said that Snape was protecting him… But that couldn’t mean… 

“Well,” he said uneasily, “I did see the green light…”

“Yes, quite right,” Malfoy replied, his voice dripping with scorn. “That would be the  _ Avada Kedavra.  _ If you’re unfamiliar, you might ask Mummy and Daddy — oh wait.” 

Harry forced himself not to react to that. The actual substance behind Malfoy’s words was of far greater concern. 

The dueler had tried to kill Malfoy. And if, against all odds and expectations, Malfoy wasn’t so skilled, it probably would have succeeded. 

“Someone tried to kill you,” he said.

“Wow, you’re not as slow as you look.” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Idiot.” 

“Who would do that?” he said, more to himself than anything. It was wildly daring and arrogant, to do something so public. They would have had to have access to the black box Snape had summoned the dueler from, and known beforehand how Snape intended to use it. 

“Thank god I’ve got Harry Potter on the case.” 

Harry knew better to expect getting anything real out of Malfoy. But he couldn’t help the question he asked next. 

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” 

Malfoy stilled. Then folded his arms over his chest and took a single menacing step forward. 

“I don’t know what you’re playing at Potter, but I won’t tell you again. Leave me the fuck alone, or I’ll make sure you do.” 

“Whatever you say, Malfoy.” 

He watched the other boy leave the bedroom, thinking over the interaction in his mind. He knew there were answers there, if only he could make sense of it all.

What he knew for sure: Draco Malfoy was on a mission, likely under threat to himself and his parents, that he didn’t want Dumbledore to know about. Snape was maybe watching out for him, and his mother was desperately pressuring him to succeed. Dumbledore may or may not already know about it. Harry was going to do his damndest to figure it out, too. 

And Draco Malfoy was terrified. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update on Friday! Please leave your thoughts below, every comment means the world to me :)


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next couple days, Harry’s curiosity bloomed into a full-blown obsession. He checked the map constantly, taking comfort in watching Malfoy’s name move around the grounds. _There, he’s in Charms, can’t be getting up to anything evil there,_ he would tell himself, or _he’s with Pansy and Blaise, he would never trust them with anything serious._ But he knew these were hollow reassurances, meant to make himself feel better for his own inaction.

But what was he supposed to do? His friends would probably want him to tell Dumbledore. But maybe Dumbledore already knew. Wouldn’t that explain why he had seemed so unconcerned, if he already knew exactly what Malfoy was up to? Plus, Harry refused to be the one that broke first in their little stalemate. So that option was out.

He’d sent a message to Lupin telling him what he knew (and adding that he would let him know about coming to Grimmauld Place as soon as he got his defense schedule, an admittedly weak excuse) but Lupin had only replied back with a quick note.

_Will look into it. Don’t do anything rash. -Remus_

That left only one option — which he was already doing: observing Malfoy. Hoping for any other information that would help him figure out why he was acting the way he was, or what he had been ordered to do. 

Try as he might, however, he couldn’t spend all his time “stalking” him. As the second week of classes began, he found himself overwhelmed with the sheer volume of work his NEWT courses demanded of him.

After their last class on Monday, they set to work at one of the tables in the common room, covering the entire surface in textbooks and scrolls. Harry was already behind in Charms and was attempting to write the fastest essay of his academic career. Ron was trying to wordlessly levitate his textbook, but had so far produced only the smallest twitch. That had been cause for celebration, and they all took a five minute chocolate frog break — except for Hermione, who was trying to get ahead in Ancient Runes.

The night before they’d come back to an announcement on the board giving the results of the trials. He’d been happy to see that most of the former DA members had made the “Above Grade” or “Advanced” levels of Snape’s workshop. His friends had all made Advanced, along with an unfortunate number of sixth year Slytherins — most of whom were currently sitting at the table across from theirs, making it their mission to be as insufferable as possible. 

“Oi, Weasley,” Blaise called, leaning backwards in his chair so it was propped on its back two legs. When two red heads swivelled towards him, he rolled his eyes and told Ron, “Not you, toadface.” 

Ron threw his frog package at him. It flittered harmlessly through the air. 

“Be a doll and do my Charms?” Blaise asked Ginny with a grin.

“I’m the year _below_ you, you dunce.” she shot back, not even bothering to look up from her book.

“Then write my Potions essay, will you? I have a cramp in my quill hand.” He stuck out his lip in a dramatic pout and batted his lashes.

“Oh, you’re so boring when you beat around the bush, Zabini,” she said, finally looking at him with a sweet grin. “If you want me to suck you off, you should just say so.” 

Ron’s face twisted in disgust. Even Hermione looked up at that one, shoving Ginny playfully. Pansy reached over and forcibly pushed Zabini’s chair back onto the ground.

“As if he’d let a little blood traitor like you anywhere near him.” 

“As if he’d let a dick biter like you—” Ginny laughed, “oh wait, he did. Bet he regrets that one.” 

“ _Calvorio,”_ Pansy shrieked, her face bright red. Thankfully Ginny’s hair remained in place as she deflected the curse.

“Spiteful bitch,” she muttered as she turned back to her book. 

Hexes and curses had become a regular occurrence between the Gryffindors and Slytherins as they entered the second rocky week of the year. Harry and his friends were attempting to take the high road, but it was nearly impossible when the Slytherins were _everywhere_. They shared free periods, half of them spreading out in the library and half in the common room, so neither of the areas were safe. They were at the same dining table; they shared the same classes. 

Most of the time their antics were relatively harmless, but it got nasty quickly whenever any of them made it personal. 

The first defense workshop blew up in a particularly spectacular fashion. To be fair, Harry had so far managed to keep his cool pretty well. It wasn’t his fault he had a weak spot for Malfoy’s particular brand of cruelty. Or that Malfoy, who had remained aloof and surly all year, had reprised his usual bitchiness just for Harry. 

The Slytherins had listened to Snape’s introduction standing as a little group in the corner. They had the usual haughty air of people who thought they were the smartest in the room. When they first walked in Ron had groaned loudly, garnering them a few glares.

“Oh brilliant,” he said. “Splendid idea. Let’s teach the Death Eater Juniors how to kill more Muggles!” 

Snape declared that there was no point moving forward until they were more proficient in wandless magic, so they took up the same drills they had been doing in class. While he had been paired up with Ron all last week, this time they weren’t so lucky. 

Ron and Pansy were paired, to their collective horror. Neville and Hermione got lucky together, and Ginny and Hannah Abbott looked pleased as they took their places across from each other.

Snape, of course, paired Harry with Malfoy.

So far Malfoy had become a welcome distraction. Harry stayed up late, tossing in turning in bed as usual, but instead of agonizing over Sirius he was thinking through everything he knew about Malfoy, trying to figure out the puzzle in his head. He couldn’t forget the sight of him crying or the despair in Narcissa’s voice as she begged him to do what he was supposed to.

But any sympathy he might feel towards Malfoy’s situation disappeared whenever he was in his general vicinity. And as long as he could still hate Malfoy, the world was still in order. 

They took their places at either end of one of the cushions Snape had conjured. First, Harry would attempt to jinx him wordlessly, while Malfoy tried to wordlessly deflect.

He already knew Malfoy could do it, with ease. And Snape did too. This was going to be miserable.

Harry stood with his wand pointed at Malfoy, as he looked back with his pale eyebrows raised, his smug grin growing wider by the second.

“Are you even trying?” he mocked after the first unsuccessful minute. 

Harry thought “ _Flipendo”_ with as much force as he could. Nothing. 

“Merlin’s beard,” Malfoy groaned. “Are you sure you’re a wizard? You just have to _channel_ your _magic_ , it’s not dragon taming. Although I suppose a simpleton like you has never applied himself so hard before.” 

Harry gritted his teeth. “You’re all talk, Malfoy. Just like always.”

“Please.” Malfoy snorted, examining his fingernails completely unconcerned as if Harry wasn’t actively trying to jinx him. “You’d be finished, Potter. If I had a clear shot and no witnesses, I might not even care that I’d bring the wrath of the wizarding world down upon me.” 

_Flipendo._ Nothing.

“Yeah, you make your threats,” Harry muttered. “You wouldn’t last one minute in a real fight.”

_Flip—_

“Cedric certainly didn’t.”

Harry faltered, then he raised his wand higher, his heart pounding in his ears.

“Keep his name out of your mouth,” he snarled. 

“Oh did I hit a nerve?” Malfoy smirked, finally giving Harry his full attention. “Fat lot of good it did any of them in the end, believing in you. What a shock — not even _Saviour Potter_ can stop a curse to the chest. Sirius Black should know.”

The name tore through Harry, ripping him apart. His vision glazed over, black spots momentarily blinding him as he stalked forward, lifting his wand and firing with every ounce of power he had.

“Shut up!” he shouted. 

Sparks shot from the end of his wand. He didn’t even know what spell he had cast; all he saw was Malfoy’s grin as he flicked his own wand, blocking the hex easily. 

“Oh, I almost felt that one.” 

He knew, logically, that Malfoy was probably just trying to make Harry forget about the vulnerability he had witnessed in Malfoy’s private moment with his mother. But that thought was little comfort in the moment, as Harry continued to cross the distance between them.

“ _Engorgio skullus,”_ he yelled the first spell that came to mind, forgoing wordless magic altogether in the heat of his rage. Another easy flick, and the hex dissolved. “ _Langlock! Expulso!”_

Malfoy was laughing, flicking aside Harry’s curses like it was a game.

The room around them had fallen very quiet. Harry barely noticed over the sound of his own beating heart. 

“ _Confringo_!” Harry shouted, and the spell burst from his wand with staggering force.

Malfoy deflected it, but just barely, not expecting the strength of the spell. His laughter died as he straightened in surprise at the close call. 

“ _Potter_ ! That is _enough_!” Snape yelled from somewhere behind him. Harry didn’t slow.

“I should gut you where you stand,” he told Malfoy, his whole body trembling.

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Oh, you will,” Harry laughed darkly. “That’s a promise. Because once I finish off Voldemort, maybe I’ll come for _you next.”_

The hall was deafening quiet. 

“Detention,” Snape snarled. “Attempting to attack a student, that’s one week. Disobeying my instructions for the exercise, I’ll add another one. And just because I say so—”

Harry walked out. 

~*~

If things in the Tower had been bad before, they were positively _glacial_ now. The Slytherins banded together in the face of Potter’s assault against their golden boy, and the Gryffindors, some of whom had heard what Malfoy said about Cedric and Sirius, thought Harry was perfectly justified. In fact, they wished a few of his spells had landed.

Harry, on the other hand, wondered for what seemed like the millionth time this year if he was going crazy. He didn't know what was wrong with him, or why he constantly felt the need to antagonize Malfoy or have a go at him. Not that Malfoy didn’t deserve it, but he had handled him for six years before now, and never felt so out of control.

Because sometimes, like that night in the bathroom, all he wanted to do was push Malfoy’s buttons, to get under his skin and force the little git to react — to show something beyond cold indifference or derision. Then other times, like in the workshop, he thought he might really like to hurt Malfoy for everything he’d done. 

Because who was Malfoy to cry at how unfair his life was? Malfoy was actively plotting something horrible and sinister that would probably result in harm to the innocents at Hogwarts (when he thought about it like that, Harry couldn’t believe he hadn’t gone to Dumbledore already) and he had the audacity to act like he was the victim?

Sure, he hadn’t intended Harry to see any of that, it had just been a private moment, but Harry _had_ seen it. And he felt foolish for those brief moments where he felt bad for Malfoy, for Voldemort living under his roof, hurting his mother, threatening his family. Because they had chosen it. They had chosen to serve him, and now that they were the ones suffering for it, they wanted to back out.

Cowards. That was what they were. They didn’t deserve his sympathy at all. Because the countless people who’d suffered and died under Voldemort really were innocent, and they never got a chance to save themselves by doing Voldemort’s bidding.

As far as Harry was concerned, Malfoy had made his bed, and now he could lie in it.

Harry was very proud of his new outlook. It made it easier to see the situation objectively, and this was the overwhelming truth of it: Malfoy was dangerous. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know what Malfoy was going to do, but he knew that underestimating him or sympathizing with him would be a fatal mistake.

The next night, he finally told Ron and Hermione. Not everything, not about the duel, not about the bathroom or the argument they’d had, but about how dire the situation really was. 

“We have to watch the Map more often,” he declared after he’d finished the story. “I’m going to go by the Room of Requirement next time I catch him in there and see if it will let me in.” 

Hermione exhaled, looking dazed.

“This is really bad, Harry,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hate to say it, but…” She looked at Ron.

“Dumbledore?” Ron filled in. They turned to Harry doubtfully.

“I won’t do it,” Harry said, more to himself than anything. “I won’t go crawling back to him with my tail between my legs to say that the problem I told him about the first day of school, that he told me was nothing, is even bigger than I thought.”

“I get that, really,” she insisted. “But… I mean, what if he does something awful?” 

“You told Remus though?” Ron added, and Harry nodded. “I’m sure he told Dumbledore already. Mum said the Order is meeting constantly now.”

Harry agreed. “They have to know. I don’t why they’re not doing anything about it, and if Dumbledore doesn’t want to tell me, fine. We’ll figure it out on our own”

“Yes, we will,” Hermione said. “It’s only…”

She looked down at her lap. Harry sighed.

“Spit it out,” he said.

“Well, think about what Voldemort would want. Here, at Hogwarts. What if he’s trying to hurt _you_ , Harry?”

Ron bit his lip. For a minute, Harry considered that; it was a fair enough point. But then he shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he mused. “It seems like he really just doesn’t want me to get in his way. I think it’s something else.”

“Promise us you’ll be careful,” Ron said. 

“I will. We all will,” Harry promised. 

Then he took out the Map and spelled it awake, watching for Malfoy’s name.

~*~

Following Malfoy around became more difficult as the Slytherins closed ranks, becoming even more hostile in the days that followed. Things had become particularly nasty after two fourth years had it out in the common room. The Gryffindor accused the Slytherin, a boy named Yaxley, of being a bastard. Apparently this was an egregious insult (his family was one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, Ron later told Harry) because Yaxley had charmed some mutated version of a Howler to follow the boy around, screaming the foulest insults Harry had ever heard in his life. All of the seventh years had to band together for an entire afternoon to get the thing to shut up. 

“Really a very powerful piece of magic,” Katie Bell had murmured, after the Howler finished a string of insults about the Gryffindor boy’s mum. He let out a long wail.

It was obvious to anyone paying attention that, sooner or later, the tensions in the Tower were going to blow up spectacularly.

Of course, after two tense weeks of insults and hexes that would have gotten many of them expelled had the Professors seen, it was only natural that the situation would implode over something totally ridiculous.

On Friday night Ginny stormed into the common room in her Quidditch jersey, soaking wet and dripping, her face murderous — or at least what Harry could see of it through the strands of hair plastered to her skin.

“I could just _kill him!”_ she shrieked and she paced across the room, her hands twitching at her side like she wanted to hit something. 

Harry and Hermione eyed each other from opposite ends of the couch, not sure whether to laugh at the sight.

“What happened?” Hermione asked.

The common room door banged open before she could answer. A group of somewhat-less soaked Slytherins entered, led by Blaise Zabini who was walking with a particular swagger.

“Oi, Weasley!” he shouted, strutting over. 

She swiveled to face him. “If you ‘ _Oi’_ me one more time!” she yelled, stomping over and shoving him square in the chest.

“Hey,” Ron crossed the room to stand between them, ignoring Ginny’s glare. “Cool it.”

“Tell him that!” Ginny cried. “Bloody idiot charmed my broom! I would have fallen a hundred feet if he had his way!”

Blaise rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, darling. Daddy would never let you fall.” 

Ginny screamed — actually screamed — but Ron was shoving Blaise back with almost as much force as she had.

“You leave my sister alone, you slithering little shit, or I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Blaise laughed.

Ron was drawing back his fist as the door opened again. Harry and Hermione jumped up from the couch to Ron’s side, but Ron was distracted enough by Pansy Parkinson fuming in the doorway, as she swept her gaze across the room until it landed on Hermione.

“You _beaver-tooth bitch!”_ she screeched, throwing herself across the room at her. Hermione squealed and ducked behind the couch, drawing her wand.

“What the fuck, Pansy!” Harry yelled, grabbing the girl’s elbow to wrench her back as she launched herself at Hermione. 

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you! _You stole my fucking Sleekeazy!”_

It was so ridiculous that Harry burst out laughing and almost lost his grip on the girl. She was jerking wildly under his hands as Hermione tried to defend herself, looking at Pansy like she was a wild animal.

“Are you mad?” she yelled. “Like I want your stupid potion anyway!” 

Behind them, Ginny had started yelling again. 

“Because you just can’t stand that you’re being _captained_ by a _girl_!” 

“Oh, I’m loving every minute of it,” Blaise shot back.

Ron roared, “Stop — hitting — on — my — sister!” 

There was the distinct sound of a punch, a sick slap against flesh. Hermione gasped as she saw whatever was going on behind them, and Harry turned instinctively, his grip loosening enough for Pansy to break free from his grip and tackle Hermione.

The girls landed in a heap on the floor, screaming and thrashing. Pansy grabbed a handful of Hermione’s hair.

“ _You clearly didn’t use it right, you ugly toad!_ ” 

“Like I would ever get with a filthy blood traitor anyway!” Blaise roared, before throwing another punch. Ron jerked back on instinct, butting Ginny in the face. Blood began to spurt from her nose.

“You idiot!” she howled, and then she kicked him in the shin hard enough to knock him off his feet.

“ _I didn’t take your potion, you lunatic!”_

Blaise laughed uproariously as Ron collapsed onto the ground. Ginny rounded on him.

“Don’t you fucking laugh, you started this!” And then she kneed him in the groin.

In the corner, a group of second years began to cheer. One of them had his wand raised at Hermione and Pansy’s scuffle, casting random charms. Pansy’s hair turned blue, and then her sweater began to Engorge _,_ the fabric draping over the two girls. Each time they rolled, they got more and more tangled.

 _“Flipendo”_ Harry cast, and Pansy was wrenched off of Hermione, who looked dazed and disheveled where she laid on the floor. 

Blaise fired at Ron, who ducked just in time. The spell hit the lion’s head bust, which began to shoot thick green slime from its mouth, splattering the walls and floor. 

“That’s enough!” Harry shouted, but just then the rest of the sixth-years Slytherins appeared in the doorway of the boy’s stairwell. Daphne Greengrass slapped a hand over her mouth. Nott looked stupefied as he took in the scene. 

Ginny had stopped yelling at Blaise, and was now standing with her hands on her hips as two fourth year Slytherins joined in, shouting in her face.

“We deserve a spot on the team! You only didn’t take us cause we’re Slytherins!” 

“I didn’t take you cause my Great Auntie Muriel could fly better in a hailstorm than you two oafs!” she shot back. 

“You _bitch_!” 

Ron had just regained his footing. As he turned, opening his mouth to defend his sister, Zabini threw the full weight of his body into him, sending them both hurtling off their feet and into the side table. The lamp fell and shattered, shards spinning across the floor, as the boys landed in a pile of slime. 

Millicent screamed. The other Slytherins burst forward from the stairs, and all hell broke loose. 

Theo wrenched Ron back just as he landed a solid right hook to Blaise’s jaw, shoving him roughly into the fireplace. 

“ _Stupefy!”_ Harry fired, blasting Theo backwards. 

“Oh,” Theo chuckled, rounding on Harry, “I’ve been waiting for this one.” 

He lowered his wand in favor of swinging his fist at Harry’s face, throwing his whole body behind it. The force of it crashed into Harry’s cheekbone, momentarily blinding him as he pitched off his feet and landed on the couch. Blinding, white-hot pain seared down his face.

“You’re guys are like — thirteen!” Ginny was screaming, as one of the young Slytherins grabbed a fistful of her hair. “But I’ll hex you if I have to!” 

Hermione, who had recomposed herself, was attempting to Petrify every student in the room. With everyone moving, and with the tears streaming down her cheeks, she’d only managed the second year busybody so far. 

Harry turned and kneed Theo in the gut, relishing the way his whole body folded up as he groaned, clutching his stomach. 

“Yeah,” Harry gasped, pressing a hand to his cheek. “Your father liked that one too.” 

Harry saw nothing but Theodore Nott’s pure rage, contorting his features as his lips pulled back in a snarl, but he was distantly aware of the common room door slamming open again behind him. Still, he didn’t take his eyes away from Nott, who — in a split second decision, too quick for Harry to react — had drawn his wand, and put every ounce of venom and hatred he had into his incantation as he cried —

“ _Cruci—!_ ”

“ _NO!”_ came another shout, as someone threw themselves forward, barreling into Nott’s side and throwing him off balance. His wand jerked upwards, a bolt of red light shooting into the ceiling, where the wood panelling splintered and crashed the floor with a deafening blow.

Then the room was very still. 

“What. _In_ _Godric’s name_. Is the _meaning of this?_ ” came McGonagall’s voice from behind him, quivering in its intensity.

But Harry didn't turn to face her — not at first. Because he was staring blankly in front of him, where Nott was shooting a betrayed look at Malfoy. 

_Malfoy._ Because it was him who threw himself in front of the curse, knocking Nott’s wand away from Harry so the Unforgivable couldn’t land. 

Malfoy met his stare for the briefest of moments before looking down at the ground.

_Draco Malfoy had saved him._

Harry turned. He couldn’t look at Malfoy for another second. His head felt like it was going to split apart.

The common room was a disaster. Two of the couches had been overturned, spatters of blood speckled the floors, and various vases and lamps had shattered in the scuffle. Not to mention that everything was coated in a layer of green slime, including Harry’s hair. 

Ginny and Ron were each holding their bloody noses, while Blaise was nursing a split lip and what looked like the beginnings of two black eyes. The younger Slytherins looked a little mussed up, but Ginny hadn’t done any real damage. Although a splotch of red along her forehead looked like a patch of hair had been yanked out, and Harry felt rage curdle within him. 

Hermione was standing off to the side with wide eyes, staring at McGonagall. Pansy’s shirt was torn in two places, a long scratch down the side of her cheek, and she tried to shrink back along the stairs with Daphne as McGonagall glowered at the group of them. 

“I know my eyes must be deceiving me. I know that this group of Sixth. Year. Students,” she enunciated each word, “did not resort to such destructive and childish behavior. _Explain yourselves._ Now.”

The sixth years looked around uneasily, not meeting each other’s stares. For a moment, no one spoke. 

Then one of the young Slytherins exploded: “She didn’t let us on the team, Professor!” 

Ginny scoffed, throwing her hands up, “Give it a rest! They were terrible, Professor, honestly—!”

McGonagall held up her hand, silencing Ginny. She closed her eyes and took a long breath before opening them again.

“Boys,” she said. “You are excused. For now. I will see to it that your Head of House disciplines you accordingly, and should you have any concerns about your Quidditch trials, please take them up with Madam Hooch instead of _beating up your Captain!_ ” 

The boys ducked their heads and scurried from the room. Harry doubted the rest of them were going to be let off so easily. 

“All of you,” McGonagall said quietly, “will report to the Headmaster’s office immediately.” 

~*~

Ten minutes later Dumbledore was peering at them all over the rim of his half-moon spectacles. Snape had been summoned, and now him and McGonagall waited at either side over Dumbledore’s shoulders as the students stood before them.

“Are any of you in need of medical attention?” Dumbledore first asked, surveying their disheveled state. Ginny and Ron’s noses had stopped bleeding, but there was admittedly an alarming amount of blood drying on the front of their robes. 

The students shook their heads. Harry stood in the back of the group, trying not to meet Dumbledore’s eyes.

“Well, good. I’m sure none of you are glad to know that no permanent damage was done,” he said, with a private little smile that showed he found this whole situation quite ridiculous. 

“Yes, well,” he continued, “I don’t think a lecture will be particularly effective here. I doubt, after six years, mere words could change your opinions of each other. Professors,” he said, turning around in his seat. “What do you deem an appropriate punishment?” 

“Detentions, for the rest of term, at a minimum,” Snape drawled.

One of the girls made a shocked sound to his left. A quick scuffle, likely an elbow to the side, silenced her. 

“Yes,” McGonagall agreed, “starting with remedying the destruction of the common room.” 

“That seems sufficient,” Dumbledore approved. “Hopefully you will use the abundance of time you’ll be spending together to work on overcoming your differences.” 

“I’m sure you will agree — Minerva, Headmaster,” Snape said, “that Hogsmeade visits are out of the question for the foreseeable future.”

Now there were a few gasps. Dumbledore nodded.

“I hope three months is long enough for you all to scrounge up appropriate regret for what has happened here today.” 

“Headmaster,” McGonagall said, “there is also the matter of the Unforgivable Curse that was cast.” 

A tenser silence overtook the office as Dumbledore’s expression tightened. 

“Yes,” he said. “Mr. Potter?”

The students around him shifted a little, so Dumbledore had an unobstructed view of Harry.

“Professor McGonagall told me that she saw Mr. Nott attempt to cast the Cruciatus Curse just before she broke up the fight. Is that correct?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Theo’s hands curl into fists. Harry thought of the pure madness he had just witnessed, the way they were now coming to blows over missing bottles of Sleekeazy and a few lazy flirtations. And he thought of the way Malfoy had stopped Nott’s curse. 

“No, sir,” he said. 

Hermione and Ron whipped back to look at him, but he didn’t meet their eyes; it would give him away. He kept his gaze steady and even on Dumbeldore. 

“No?” the Headmaster said. 

He shook his head resolutely, making something up on the spot. “He cast _Cantis_ at me, sir, not _Crucio.”_

McGonagall watched him with beady, narrowed eyes. Her gaze pinged between Harry and Nott, who was looking at the floor in silence. 

“Why, then, did Mr. Malfoy try to stop a simple Singing Curse so ardently?” McGonagall demanded, not believing him for a second.

Harry looked at Malfoy to find he was already staring back at him. For a moment, they just watched each other, something heavy and significant passing between them.

Malfoy turned to McGonagall and said, “If you ever heard Potter in the shower, Professor, you would understand.” 

Hermione’s mouth was hanging open. Ginny started to say something, but Ron stopped her with a violent grip on her arm. 

McGonagall was watching the students in disbelief. But Dumbledore had a small smile on his face.

“Well, Minerva, if Mr. Potter denies the attack, surely that’s all there is to it.”

Harry got the distinct impression that Dumbledore was proud of him. It made Harry want to punch him in the face. 

McGonagall tightly clasped her hands in front of her. “Fine. You will all report to the common room at 7AM tomorrow morning.”

“Dismissed,” Dumbledore added.

The walk back to the dorms was tense and silent. Hermione was making wild eyes at Harry, but he shook his head in expression he hoped she understood to mean he’d explain later. Only once did Nott turn and throw and dark glare over his shoulder.

“What are you playing at, Potter?” he growled.

Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome.” 

Blaise grabbed Theo’s shoulder, pulling him back around. 

He headed for the boy’s stairwell, but Hermione stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Later, ‘Mione, okay?” he said. She nodded tersely and headed up to her room, followed by a very sullen-looking Pansy. 

Harry spent an extra minute casting the protective enchantments over their side of the room that night. When he finally laid down to bed, he could feel Ron’s heavy stare boring into the side of his face.

With a sigh, he turned his head and opened his eyes.

“Yes?” he said, exasperated.

“Care to explain?” 

Harry sighed. “What was I supposed to say? If I threw Nott under the bus, all of this is only going to get worse. I don’t want to live like this all year, do you?”

Ron grimaced. “So you want us to what — make peace with them? Kiss their asses and tell them sorry? Cause I won’t do that.”

“I’m not saying that,” Harry grumbled. “I’m just not going to give them another reason to cause problems.”

Harry rolled over, done with this conversation.

“And you can tell that to Hermione in the morning,” he added, before drawing his curtains shut. 

An hour later, through the wall of his enchantments, he heard a rustling noise of someone in no-man’s land. Peering out around his curtains, he watched a pale head disappear into the bathroom.

 _Oh, what the hell_ , he thought, throwing off his blankets.

This time, Malfoy barely startled as he pushed the door open. He was smoking another cigarette in what must be a nightly ritual, and he only sighed softly at the interruption.

“What?” he demanded. 

“This is a shared space, you git,” Harry said, as if he didn’t purposely follow Malfoy in here. 

“Whatever.” Malfoy rubbed a hand over his eyes. His voice lacked its characteristic venom as he stifled a yawn. “You still have slime in your hair, you know.”

Harry hung back in the doorway for a second, just watching him. The night air rushing in through the window sent waves rippling through Malfoy’s own hair, which was slightly mussed up. He looked younger. Less dangerous.

But that was only an illusion, Harry reminded himself.

He crossed the bathroom, leaning against the window a few feet from Malfoy, who watched him with a rather sour expression.

“If you’re trying to bum a fag, use your words, Potter,” he mocked. 

Harry only stared back at him, not rising to the bait. 

“Why’d you do it?” he said quietly. 

Nothing changed in Malfoy’s face — he was too perfectly composed to give anything away — but his hand froze for just the briefest instant as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth. 

“Do what?” he said casually, turning towards the window. 

“You know what.”

Malfoy’s eyes met his again. He held Harry’s stare as he exhaled a long puff of smoke, and then he shrugged and looked away.

“If McGonagall saw him do it, we’d get the blame for the whole affair — and probably the last two weeks of shite too. Couldn’t let my whole house go down just because Nott’s an idiot.” 

Harry smiled, just barely. 

“I don’t believe you,” he said, because he didn’t. He had seen Malfoy out of the corner of his eye during the fight, watching him and Theo. He hadn’t even looked towards the door to see McGonagall standing there. 

It seemed like that was all Malfoy was going to say. But then he looked back, his eyes scouring Harry’s face.

“Have you ever been _Crucioed_?” he finally asked. 

Harry swallowed roughly, and forced the word out. "Once." 

Malfoy straightened with a short nod, stamping out his cigarette and pushing off from the wall.

“That’s why I did it,” he said. 

Long after the door slammed shut behind Malfoy, Harry stared out into the night, letting the cool air wash over his face until it was numb. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave your thoughts below!! I'd love to hear for you guys :) what you are liking, what you're not, what you hope will happen, anything!


	5. Chapter 5

He regretted his little late-night encounter sorely in the morning when Ron had to prod him awake for detention. As the boys dressed and washed up in their shared bathroom, the tension was palpable. Theo elbowed Harry out of his way to reach his toothbrush, and Ron promptly retaliated by sending the spray of water from the faucet shooting in his direction with a flick of his wand, drenching his shirt. 

Down in the common room, the girls were just as strained. Ginny and Hermione were waiting on the couch, a good ten feet from the Slytherins hanging back in their own group. Pansy looked like she just rolled out of bed, her normally shiny hair sticking up in tufts. No wonder she was so peeved about her missing Sleekeezy. 

Crossing the room was an event in and of itself. The slime had hardened into thick, gelatinous pools overnight that clung to the bottom of Harry’s shoes. A few of the couches had remained clean, directly underneath the arc of slime from the lion head’s mouth, but the rest of the room was covered in varying degrees of sludge.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ron said, yanking his foot from the pile he’d just stepped in. 

They sat in terse silence until McGonagall arrived. She looked around and some of her previous anger seemed to return.

“Well, it seems you have quite the job ahead of you,” she declared. “You are not permitted to leave until this room is spotless. Furthermore, for the irresponsibility of your actions to really sink in, you will surrender your wands to me and clean this room without the use of magic.” 

Pansy threw her hands up. “That will take all day!”

“Then you’d better get to work.” 

Parting with his wand made him feel naked and exposed. As the students handed them over, they shot various glares at the classmates around them; it was clear that everyone blamed the others for what had happened yesterday. 

A house elf appeared with cleaning supplies and then promptly Disapparated, with an expression on her face suggesting that she could hardly bear to leave the cleaning job to them. 

“This is great,” Ron grumbled, grabbing a mop. “If Blaise hadn’t pulled that stunt with the fucking slime, we would have been done in an hour!” 

“And if you hadn’t tried to punch me like a barbarian,” Blaise seethed, “we might not be here at all.”

“Don’t forget your psycho girlfriend’s little catfight!” Ron shot back, pointing at Pansy.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Blaise said, shooting a glance at Ginny. Pansy flicked her hair over her shoulder and turned away, stomping across the room with her broom.

The first thirty minutes would have been amusing to Harry, if they didn’t prove that they were going to be here forever. It was immediately apparent that many of them had never done any manual labor in their lives. While Ron, Hermione, and Daphne got to work scrubbing the floors, Theo was trying to clean the windows with a toilet plunger and Blaise was using sandpaper to scrape the slime off the fireplace. The house elf, it seemed, had been a little too thorough in her selection of supplies. It all would have gone a lot faster if she’d given them a couple dish rags and mops and called it a day.

“How do Muggles ever get anything done?” Blaise groaned after twenty minutes of silence, as the glob of slime he’d managed to get off the mantle promptly fell with a  _ splat _ onto the floor.

Harry righted one of the chairs by the window, sweeping up the shards from the lamp that had ended up underneath it. He turned and saw Malfoy by the wall with his back to the rest of the room, looking upwards. Harry followed his gaze to see that he was summoning the slime off the ceiling. How did he avoid turning over his wand?

But then Harry looked closer, and saw that Malfoy’s hand was empty, making small movements at his side to direct the flow of the slime through wandless magic.

Harry huffed, refusing to let himself be impressed, and Malfoy’s head whipped towards him. The slime landed in the bucket at his feet.

“Cheater,” Harry said. 

Malfoy sneered, “Jealous much?” 

“Yeah. If I could do wandless magic, I’d be helping us along a little faster.” Because the area Malfoy had claimed was barely any cleaner than when they’d started.

“It takes quite a lot of energy,” Malfoy defended himself. “I wouldn’t expect _you_ to understand it.” 

“You might consider getting your hands dirty like the rest of us,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes.

He crossed the room to the trash to empty his dustpan. For a while they cleaned in silence, only interrupted by the occasional student coming down from their rooms for breakfast. Some of them stopped to poke fun at their suffering housemates, but they thankfully were left in peace for the morning. 

A few hours later and Hermione and Daphne were still scrubbing the floor on their knees, red-faced and sweating from the exertion. In the corner, Blaise and Theo were snickering as Blaise flicked globs of slime into Pansy’s hair.

“Real nice, Zabini,” Ron spat out as he looked up and caught sight of them. “It was your stupid slime-lion that caused this mess, and you can’t even be arsed to help!”

“Defending my honor, Weasley?” Pansy stuck out her tongue as Blaise sighed dramatically behind her. 

“Hands like these weren’t meant for labor,” he said, waggling his fingers in front of his face. 

“Face like that was meant to be punched, though. Nice eyes.” Ron smirked. It was true: Blaise was sporting two purple blotches, his left eye almost entirely swollen shut.

Blaise scowled. “That old hag refused to heal me. Said I should have thought about it before picking a fight.”

Ron looked up at Harry. “Remind me to give ‘ole Pomfrey a hug next time I see her.” 

Ginny’s head popped up from behind the couch, where she had been scrubbing some cleaning solution into the blood-stained carpet. 

“I’ll heal your face, Zabini,” she said, grinning when he turned to her in shock.

“Alright, Weasley?” he said, looking very pleased with himself.

“If you do my Potions homework for a week,” she added sweetly. 

Blaise wasn’t deterred. He titled his head, considering it. “Only if we can spend the time together.” 

Ginny rolled her eyes with a groan. “Merlin, you’re relentless.”

“I’m a lot of things.” He winked.

“ _ Gross _ .”

“So is it a deal?”

“Nope,” Ginny declared. “But you’ll agree anyways.” 

She approached the trolley of cleaning supplies to switch out the cleaner for a powder of some sort. Ron watched her with his hands on his hips, waiting for her to explain herself.

She shrugged. “Gotta play like a Slytherin sometimes.”

“No, you most certainly do not! He’s only trying to get in your  _ pants _ , Gin.”

“And here I thought he was ready to introduce me to his parents!” 

Harry turned away from their bickering. Likely annoyed with Blaise’s flirting, Pansy had walked away from the fireplace to join Malfoy. The two of them were washing the window together, talking quietly. Pansy flicked Malfoy with her rag, and Malfoy jumped back, throwing his head back in the first genuine laugh Harry had seen from him in a while. 

He slowly gravitated towards their side of the room, pretending to dry down the table that Millicent had just done. Whatever the two had been laughing about before, their conversation had moved on. Now Pansy’s voice was soft and earnest.

“Just go see Hooch. I’m sure she’d give you a second chance.”

“Merlin’s beard, Pans. How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want to play this year?”

“Until I believe it.” 

Harry hadn’t known that he didn’t show up to tryouts. He supposed that information had been forgotten in Ginny’s rage last night. For once, he understood Malfoy’s actions perfectly. He imagined that something as trivial as Quidditch felt just as meaningless to Malfoy as it now did to him. 

Harry wondered who had  _ Crucioed  _ Malfoy. He wondered if Malfoy was going to die. He wondered if he would care if he did. 

Across the room, Ron and Ginny’s argument had spilled over to include the whole group now, Theo’s voice elevating to a shout. The pair of them noticed too, as Pansy, always looking for a fight, quickly left Malfoy’s side to shout along with him as she crossed the room.

Hermione and Daphne had joined in, trying to play the peacemakers. 

“Do we have to start another fight? Much more and we’ll be in detention until we graduate,” Daphne whined.

“ _ We _ most certainly will not,” Pansy scoffed, glaring daggers at Ron. “I won’t take the fall for Gryffindor  _ idiocy _ ever again.”

“Says the girls who went rabid on Hermione last night!” Ron shouted back, throwing down his broom with a huff.

Hermione placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to contain him. “Really, Ron, just leave it, you know they’re awful—”

“This place is awful,” Blaise sneered, scooping another handful of green goo from the mantel, as Ron shrugged off Hermione’s hand, his face flaming red.

“Well maybe if you hadn’t slimed the place—!”

“Would you  _ shut up about the stupid slime?”  _ Harry burst out, his voice cutting through the others and instantly silencing their arguing. Ron turned to him in shock, looking hurt. Blaise and Theo looked between the two of them in various degrees of stunned amusement.

“Ron,” Harry said in a calmer tone, “you literally beat his eye shut. Ginny kicked him in the junk. Can’t we all just admit that we snapped and beat the shit out of each other and move on?” 

“Potter’s right,” Blaise said. “Although I definitely landed more on Weasley than the other way around…”

Ron scoffed at that, looking like he might say something, but he stopped. The silence between them had taken on a new quality. It was almost… uneasy, as if none of them knew what to say anymore. Harry’s outburst in their defense had seemed to thaw something between them, because now Blaise was looking at him with something almost  _ appreciative  _ in his eyes, which surely couldn’t be, could it?

Harry turned away, meeting Daphne’s eyes. She gave him a short, grateful nod.

They all turned back to their tasks. When McGonagall dismissed them for lunch twenty minutes later, they walked to the Great Hall in silence. 

~*~

They’d gotten more done than it had seemed. When they returned and saw the common room with fresh eyes, it seemed the mood of the whole place lifted as they realized they likely weren’t going to be cleaning until midnight like they first thought. 

No more arguments broke out. The groups avoided each other completely, committing themselves to their work with a new intensity. Even Ron and Ginny stayed on opposite sides of the room, knowing they would bicker over the smallest things. 

Malfoy’s corner was almost finished. He was washing down the windows a final time, his pale shoulders undulating beneath the thin fabric of his robes. 

Although he had wanted to strangle Malfoy the other day at the workshop, now Harry could look at him with calm detachment. He knew there was something seriously wrong about the fact that they spent half the time being outright homicidal to each other and the other half getting under each other’s skin with uncanny precision. 

Neither of those two approaches seemed to be working. When Harry was cruel and vicious, Malfoy only retreated back into his own cold cruelty, and when he attempted to goad him on, Malfoy didn’t seem to know how to respond. 

Harry wasn’t sure their relationship would allow for a third option, but it was worth a shot. 

Without thinking about it, Harry approached the corner and sidled up besides him. Malfoy looked over and pressed his lips together.

“ _ Yes? _ ” he drawled, his hand making a long arc across the surface of the window with the wet rag. 

“You have to scrub,” Harry said. “Otherwise you’re just smearing the mess around.”

“I think I can manage to wash a window, you buffoon.”

Really Malfoy was doing a fine job, he just had no other excuse for coming over. Maybe directness would be his new approach. After all, there were so many questions he wanted to ask him. He just knew that Malfoy wouldn’t answer any of them. 

Maybe if he started with something simple. 

He said, “Can I ask you something?” 

Malfoy scrubbed harder. “No.”

“Come on. One question.”

“Why?” 

“I don’t know. Just curious.” 

“Not my problem.”

“You can ask something back.”

Malfoy looked over then, a withering glare. “You severely overestimate how interesting I find you, Potter.”

“I don’t think I do,” Harry said. 

A little crease appeared between Malfoy’s brows at that. Then, with some effort, he rolled his eyes like Harry was the bane of his existence (which he supposed he probably was) and gave a weary sigh. 

“Fine. Go ahead.” 

Harry propped a hip against the wall to better study Malfoy’s face. “Why don’t you spend any time with your friends anymore?”

Malfoy’s hand stilled for a moment, soap dripping from the rag and down the window in streaks. He turned to meet Harry’s stare with a raised brow.

“ _ What? _ ” 

“What?” Harry repeated innocently. 

“That’s your question?” 

“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”

Malfoy shook his head and turned back to the window. He scraped a line of slime that had pooled at the bottom and threw it into the bucket. 

“What do you want from me, Potter?”

“Is that  _ your _ question?” Harry said. When Malfoy only glared back, he prodded, “Come on. I won’t answer yours honestly unless you do the same.” 

Malfoy was looking back at him very strangely, his eyes narrowed, searching Harry’s stare. 

“Things aren’t the same as they used to be,” he finally said, in a very measured tone. “I have bigger things to worry about than hexing Gryffindors and picking fights with the Weasleys.” With a disparaging smile, he added, “in case you forgot.” 

He was referencing the conversation Harry had overhead, he knew. Neither of them had mentioned it since. Harry wanted to press the issue, but he knew that would only cause Malfoy to shut down completely. For some reason, Malfoy had indulged him with what seemed to be a relatively honest answer. 

“We aren’t children anymore,” Malfoy finished, which wasn’t strictly true, but Harry knew well enough what he meant. 

“I guess not,” he agreed, and then he smirked up at him. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” 

Malfoy gave him a dirty look as he bent to pick up his bucket. He turned, beginning to walk away.

“Don’t you want to ask me something?” Harry said before he could leave.

Malfoy didn’t turn. “I’m saving my turn,” he said cooly over his shoulder. “You never said I had to take it now.”

It somehow felt like a win, though for the life of him, Harry couldn’t understand why.

~*~

Later, after McGonagall had come by and approved their work, then waved her own wand to get rid of any last pesky traces of blood and slime, the boy’s trudged up to their room. The stairs seemed longer than usual tonight, and Harry crested the steps slowly. He wasn’t sure if the group’s silence was because of their sheer exhaustion or because of what had happened earlier.

Ron plopped down on his bed with a groan. He was already pulling back his covers to go to sleep, so Harry turned to start casting the incantations.

Across the room, Blaise stretched his arms above his head with a loud yawn. When he caught Harry’s gaze, he rubbed the back of his neck, looking uneasy.

Then he shook his head, and a grin slowly spread over his face.

“Never thought I'd see you lash out at Weaselby, Potter,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head as he began to rifle through his drawers. "Almost more fun than doing it myself."

Malfoy and Nott had frozen at Blaise’s words, as had Ron. For the past two weeks, there had been an unspoken rule: not a single word had been said in the room, both sides rigidly adhering to their divide. Now Blaise was acknowledging that today had put a tiny chink in that wall.

He was still rummaging for his nightshirt, in his characteristic nonchalant way regardless of the tension of a situation. But the other three boys were still staring at Harry, knowing it was his move as to how this went. 

“Just promise I never have to hear the word "slime" again in my life,” he said, as casually as he could manage. 

Blaise straightened with a little chuckle. “You got it.” 

For once, Ron let his comments slide, too distracted by the strangeness of the interaction. His eyes were ping-ponging between the two of them, and when Harry finally met his questioning gaze, he could only shrug back helplessly. 

Blaise was in bed now, situating himself underneath his blankets. Theo had rallied from his initial surprise and gotten into bed too, chattering away to Blaise about something unrelated, both of them seeming to notice or care that neither side had put up their defensive walls yet. 

It was only Malfoy who was still standing at the foot of his bed, watching Harry with a blank expression on his face. Very deliberately, Harry turned and drew back his own covers. 

Only once he had drawn his curtain close did he hear Malfoy’s low voice.

“ _ Salvio Hexia. Protego Maxima, Fianto Duri. Sonoro Interius.”  _

The last spell cut out his voice, conjuring a sound barrier between the two sides. 

Well. Harry supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything else. He opened his curtains to cast his own spells, and then laid awake for hours, imagining sounds that weren’t there drifting across the room. 

And when he heard the bathroom door open in the very early hours of the morning, he forced himself not to follow, even when he swore he heard the boy pause in front of Harry’s side for the briefest of seconds before the door shut. 

~*~

After a particularly grueling defense workshop, Harry and his friends laid around in the common room, too exhausted to trek down to the Great Hall for dinner. Instead they pooled the snacks they’d stashed in their rooms, and had a strange supper of pastries and candy. 

Harry rubbed a hand over his stomach with a groan and he stretched out his legs across the couch. One too many chocolate frogs. 

“Got another one of those apple tarts?” Ron asked Hermione.

“Are you sure it will fit?” Hermione laughed.

“Please,” Ron scoffed. Then, after a moment’s consideration, “I may have to unbutton my trousers.” 

Hermione laughed and began to dig through the mound of sweets on the table to find it. With a sigh, Harry turned and grabbed the Map from his bag.

“Did you have the last one, Harry?” she asked. 

“Hm?” he said, unfolding the Map to better search the campus. 

“The apple tarts,” she repeated. 

He folded down the bottom flap and, finally spotting Malfoy’s name, sighed. 

“Sitting in the Great Hall,” he reported aloud. “Nothing interesting there.”

He tossed aside the Map. It took a moment for him to notice Hermione watching him with a strange expression. She found an apple tart in the pile, and threw it to Ron wordlessly. 

“What?” he said.

She tilted her head at him with narrowed eyes. “Do you think maybe you’re becoming a little too obsessed with Malfoy?” 

Harry bristled, sitting up straighter. 

“No,” he said, trying not to sound defensive. “I’ve been following him for weeks and haven’t learned a thing about what he's up to.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I know you’re working hard to keep an eye on him. And we’re all glad that you seem a little more… yourself. I just hope you're not using Malfoy as a distraction to avoid thinking about… well… other things.”

Harry had no idea how Malfoy and his  _ other things  _ were related. 

“I’m fine, Hermione. When we finally bust him you’ll be glad for my obsessiveness.” 

“And when you fail your NEWTs because you spend more time watching that Map than revising…” she trailed off.

He rolled his eyes and leaned back on the couch, willing his stomach to digest faster.

Missing dinner meant they missed the owl post. An hour later, a small barn owl landed on the window, hooting loudly. 

The three of them looked up at each other. No one wanted to get up.

With a groan, Harry pushed himself off the couch and untied the note from the owl’s leg. She pecked him affectionately on the hand and flew off.

The note was short and sweet, written with the possibility of interception in mind.

_ Update on DM. GP’s doorstep is open. -Moony _

Harry crumbled the note and threw it into the fire. He must have thought that Dumbledore would help him apparate. 

“Lupin’s got info on the… situation,” he said, since they were no longer alone in the common room. “Gonna see if McGonagall will let me floo.” 

She was surprisingly accommodating, despite the events of the last weekend. Ten minutes later he was coughing up smoke, stepping out of the fireplace into the living room of Grimmauld Place and tracking soot all over the carpet.

Lupin jumped up from the couch with a smile. Harry focused on his warm face instead of looking around at the familiar grimness of the Place. 

“Harry,” Lupin came forward and clasped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you could come.”

“Sorry I couldn’t make it earlier.”

Lupin gave him a wry smile. “I can’t say I blame you.”

“I should have reached out sooner,” Harry said, wanting to get it over with. “To tell you that I really don’t mind you staying here. I hope you didn’t feel like you had to leave on my account. Quite frankly, I have no intention of ever stepping foot here again.”

“That’s kind of you, Harry. But I also would like nothing more than to put this place behind me.”

The Professor had always been tall and wiry, but he looked more gaunt than ever. There were dark bags under his eyes and a new heaviness in the lines of his face. For a moment, Harry felt an overwhelming wave of sympathy for Remus, seeing him with a certain clarity that he never had before.

They had both lost so much.

Harry cleared his throat. He’d never get through this visit if he went down that path so quickly. 

“Tea?” Lupin asked, and Harry nodded and followed him into the kitchen.

The room felt strange and empty. The last time he’d been here, everything had been so different.  _ He _ had been so different. Between the Wealsey’s and the Order, the kitchen had never been empty: Molly always had a dish on the table, Sirius was always flittering around the edges of the room, refilling wine glasses the moment they threatened to empty. 

It had never been quiet, either. Sirius had a ridiculous aversion to silence, and constantly had a record playing, or made small talk with whoever happened to be there that day. But it had never seemed like small talk with Sirius, mindless and unimportant. He always seemed totally engaged, hanging on every word you had to say, even if it was just about the weather or the Witches’ Weekly column.

And then there had been many days that Harry had come down here to escape Mrs. Weasley’s endless jobs, and sat alone with Sirius right in these very seats, listening to stories and talking about school and the future. It had seemed so inevitable then, even with the war, that they would be happy. That one day, they would have the things that they had both lost: stability, longevity, family. 

Fools, the two of them. They had been such fools.

Lupin put two steaming mugs down on the table and sat down across from Harry.

“So you found something out about Malfoy?” Harry forced himself to say, because he couldn’t bear to tackle the topic of Sirius just yet, not when it all felt so close. 

Remus nodded and sipped his tea. “I looked into what you told me about in Knockturn Alley. Lucky break really. Borgin was busted for selling some real dark objects in his shop, so the Ministry was able to seize anything without a second glance. Kingsley sent me an inventory. The only thing that matched your description — too large to carry unnoticed down a street, and in need of mending somehow — was a Vanishing Cabinet.”

“A Vanishing Cabinet,” Harry repeated. 

“Turns out Borgin was very particular about it when it was being taken in. He said that the item was on hold, already purchased by a very reputable buyer, and that the Ministry couldn’t take it. Of course, they did anyway, but it proved he was still holding it for Draco.” 

What would Malfoy want with a Vanishing Cabinet? Was he looking for a way to get out of Hogwarts unnoticed? He would have to have another one, if he wanted to form a passage. Harry remembered Mr. Weasley mentioning that wizards used cabinets during the First Wizarding War to escape from pursuers. But that didn’t explain what use Malfoy would have for it.

“All right,” Harry said. “I’ll look into it.” 

“I hope you’re being careful,” Lupin warned, adopting his sternest Professor-voice. 

Harry smiled, thinking of just how reckless he’d already been this year. Cornering Malfoy. Eavesdropping, and then revealing himself to him. Following him under the Cloak. Pushing him, and provoking him, trying to get under his skin. 

“Of course,” he replied easily. 

What he would never say to Lupin, but that seemed abundantly clear to him now back within the stifling confines of Grimmauld Place, was that Draco Malfoy  _ had _ become somewhat of a crutch for Harry. As long as he could focus on where Malfoy was going and what he was up to, obsessing over it all hours of the day, he never had to think about the thoughts that had plagued him all summer. He remembered the hours he spent alone on the train ride to Hogwarts, desperate for any momentary distraction for the ache inside of him. Who knew he would stumble upon such a perfect one so soon after. 

Lupin drained his tea and took a deep breath. “There’s also the other matter that I wrote to you about earlier.”

Harry felt his face drop. He tried to nod convincingly. 

“Right,” he said. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

“We don’t have to do this, if it’s too hard—”

“No, no,” Harry jumped in, “It’s fine. I’m fine.” 

And as long as they kept it very surface level, sitting in their dead friend’s home drinking tea, talking about his possessions like they were just interesting artifacts Lupin had stumbled upon, Harry really would be fine. He would. He could do this.

“Okay,” Lupin said, standing and collecting their mugs. “There are really dozens of Black family artefacts that you might find interesting. Everything’s in the attic, whenever you want to look. It’s just this here that I thought I should make sure you got.”

Lupin disappeared from the room for a moment, rifling through a box in the living room. He reappeared with a small black satchel in his hands.

Harry didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until his vision started to swim. He drew in a few ragged breaths and shoved his hands under his thighs to stop them from shaking. 

Lupin didn’t hand the bag over. He stood in front of Harry for a minute, warring with his words.

“Sirius prepared this a few months before he—” Lupin broke off, smiling with no amusement. “Before,” he finished, leaving it there. “He wanted to be sure you would have it even if he was no longer around to give it to you. It’s really the most forethought he’s ever given anything in his life,” he added with a small grin. Then, like it was physically hard to hand over, Lupin shoved the bag in Harry’s direction.

Harry took it. His mind was blank. It took him a few tries to open the leather pouch and pull out a small vial, filled with a swimming, silvery liquid. 

His stomach plummeted. He looked up at Remus, uncomprehending, before holding the vial up in front of his face like he needed to convince himself it was real.

“I don’t know what memories he left you,” Remus said quietly. “But he put a lot of thought into it. Since he knew he was one of the few people who could give you real memories of your parents.” 

Harry was listening to him distantly with one half of his awareness. The other half was an astonishing blur of emotion. This was so much different than what he had been expecting. Not some Black family heirloom, or something of Sirius’ like a journal or a piece of clothing. This was Sirius’  _ memories.  _ These were from his own mind, a mind that died with him, and yet, a part of it lived in Harry’s very hand. 

Harry didn’t know what to say. There were no words. This didn’t feel real. Half of him wanted to race to the nearest Pensieve, to throw himself into the silver. The other half had the strange impulse to throw the vial clear across the room, as far away from him as possible.

Staring at the swirling gas inside the vial, he fought back a rush of emotion. He was thinking pathetic, weepy things.  _ This is the closest I’ll ever be to him ever again. _

With numb fingers, he put the vial back in the bag and folded it shut. He placed it on the table, or maybe it fell from his fingers, he wasn’t sure. Instead of looking up at Remus, he stared at the wooden tabletop, the perfect circle of condensation from where the mug had been. 

“Remus?” he said finally, when he was sure his voice would be steady. Remus was watching him with mingled pity and concern, looking a little out of his depth. But Harry had to ask, he had to say it, to someone who understood. To someone who felt the loss the way Harry did, in a way his friend’s would never be able to grasp. 

“How do you bear it?” he said. “How do you go on?”

Remus let out a shaky sigh and raked a hand through his hair. “Oh Harry. I’m not the best person to ask. Not at all.” After a moment of consideration, he added, “well, maybe that can be my advice.”

He sat down again, looking into Harry’s eyes earnestly. “Don’t do what I did. To block out the good memories with the bad, it was the most cowardly thing I’ve ever done… Remember the good memories, because you shouldn’t deny yourself the happiness he brought you. And remember the painful ones, because to forget them cheapens what he meant to you. It will always hurt. It might always hurt just as much as it did the day he died. But you’ll always love him as much as you did then, too. To forget the love you had for him, and the love he had for you – that would be the greatest tragedy.”

Harry knew that was exactly what he had been doing — trying to block everything out, so as to not let the pain in. He didn’t know how to remember the good ones without having everything rush in. It all hurt. His smile, his laugh, the way he smelled, which somehow still hung in the air around them, Harry realized then with a sick rush. 

But he knew Lupin’s words were true, and genuine. It was suddenly very clear that Remus knew exactly how much pain Harry felt, because that pain was echoed in his own words.

“I’m sorry,” Harry found himself saying, because in the empty kitchen of Grimmauld Place, Remus’s life felt very small. “It hurts to be alone.” 

Remus smiled, bitter and melancholy. “They were the best people I’ve ever known. The greatest friends of my life. This horrible war, I could just…”

His words died off with a ragged edge as he gritted his teeth and looked down at his lap. Something in his tone reminded Harry of his own words, earlier in the year. 

“Do you ever…” he was still weirdly hesitant to say it out loud— “resent Dumbledore?” 

Remus looked up, his eyes a little watery, but this time his smile was knowing. 

He said, “Every day of my life.”

~*~

Soon after, Harry Floo’ed back to Hogwarts, the vial burning a hole in his pocket and the Pensieve from Grimmauld Place with it. Thankfully, Remus had known that Harry would not want to watch the memories there, and had helpfully shrunken down the Pensieve to take with him. 

McGonagall only gave him the briefest nod of acknowledgement as he stepped out of the fire, for which he was tremendously grateful. He didn’t think he could manage words just then.

He wished he had the Map with him, so he could see if his friends were waiting to ambush him in the common room.  _ Who am I kidding,  _ he thought — of course they would be. If he’d brought his Cloak, he could have slipped by them, but he really didn’t want to repeat his early childish behavior of just stomping past them. They deserved more than that.

But he just couldn’t think right now. His friends would see through him in an instant — he had Sirius’  _ memories  _ in his pocket, for fuck’s sake. It seemed too strange to be true, and the thought of facing them or not was equally terrifying.

There was only one place in the castle that would ensure he could be alone. He quickly mounted the stairs to the seventh floor, hoping he wouldn’t run into anyone. 

The corridor was glorious empty. He walked up and down the smooth stone wall three times, thinking:  _ I need a place to hide.  _ He didn’t have any specifics — any room would do. 

The stone morphed into a small wooden door before his eyes. When he entered the Room of Requirement, it was unnaturally dark. He wondered if the Room had taken his request a little too literally, making it impossible for anyone to find anything within the room. Harry squinted, willing his eyes to adjust, but the darkness was impenetrable.

Then, from his left, a familiar voice shouted, “ _ Expelliarmus!” _

Harry’s wand was wrenched from his hands. He spun, blind and defenseless, towards the sound of the voice. 

The room had been magically darkened when he entered, but now the lights flickered on all at once. Malfoy stood a few feet away, holding both Harry’s wand and his own, looking surprised. The room around them was perfectly empty, save for the lamps along the wall.

Strangely, Harry thought:  _ no one would find us here.  _ And it was true. They were very alone, standing in the dim light of the little square space. No one would look for Harry here. No one would find him, just as he had asked. 

Harry held Malfoy’s stare steadily. Malfoy made no move towards him, or to give him back his wand. 

With an ironic tilt of his head, recalling Malfoy’s earlier words, Harry said, “You have me disarmed. No witnesses.” 

Malfoy started back at him, his wide eyes blinking slowly like he was still processing the sight of him. Whatever he had been doing in here, he hadn't expected anyone to show up. 

Then he made a derisive sound at Harry’s words, tossing his wand back to him like he was no greater threat than a house elf. But he didn’t let down his guard completely. 

“Did you follow me here?” he said, his tone wary.

“Not everything is about you, Malfoy.” Harry retorted, as if he hadn’t been planning to follow Malfoy to the Room as soon as possible. “You’re the one that attacked me.” 

“‘ _ Attacked,’ _ ” Malfoy scoffed. “I forgot, I’m talking to the boy who thinks  _ Expelliarmus _ is the greatest defensive spell known to man.”

Harry flushed at the meaning there, and the implication. Of course Lucius would have told Malfoy all about that night in the graveyard. Did Malfoy care that Cedric had died? Probably not. Harry reminded himself that he was dealing with someone who knew just how dangerous Voldemort really was. 

“Am I to go twenty rounds with you?” Harry said, keeping his voice casual. “I don’t quite have the energy for our verbal sparring today, lovely as it may be.”

“Well, if you’d rather spar physically,” Malfoy smirked, “by all means.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Goodbye, Malfoy.”

He turned for the door; if Malfoy was in here, this room was not the perfect hideout he had hoped for. 

“Wait.” 

Harry stopped. Malfoy was watching him, scrutinizing his face. 

“What’s the matter?” he finally said.

“What?”

“Why do you look like that?” Malfoy was uncharacteristically abrupt.

“Like what?” Harry said, looking around in each direction in confusion, like he was missing something.

“All… I don’t know, weird and sad or whatever.” 

Malfoy made a dismissive movement with his hand — the one holding his own wand at his side — and the lamplight reflected a flash of silver. When Malfoy’s hand stilled, Harry could see that he was holding his father’s pocket watch — that he had been holding it when Harry had come into the room and interrupted… whatever it was that Malfoy had been doing. 

For a moment, after the events of the day, the ache of missing Sirius stronger than ever burning a hole in his chest, Harry could almost sympathize with him. 

_ Almost _ .

“I’m fine,” he insisted. 

“Bollocks,” Malfoy shot back, crossing his arms over his chest now. “That’s my question. I’m taking my turn.”

For a second Harry was speechless. Of course Malfoy hadn’t forgotten about their little truth-for-truth game. But he expected Malfoy to lord it over him for a far more interesting piece of information than how he was  _ feeling. _

“Seriously?” he said. 

“What?” Malfoy said, a tad defensive. “I know you’re not honorable enough that you wouldn’t tell me to sod off if you really didn’t want to answer. Or clever enough to just lie to me instead, knowing I’d never know the difference.”

Harry huffed out some semblance of a laugh at that, feeling strangely buoyed by Malfoy’s familiar wit. The pressure on his chest lifted ever so slightly. A crutch, he had called Malfoy, but maybe “drug” would be more accurate. Malfoy was the only one in his life who never tiptoed around him, and it was slightly addictive.

“Well?” Malfoy prompted. “Tell me to sod off or lie, which will it be?”

He wondered if Malfoy enjoyed their banter too, if he would even admit it to himself if he did. Like Dumbledore said, Malfoy was very alone this year, with Voldemort to answer to and friends who don’t understand him. He kept waiting for Malfoy to finally push him away, to start ignoring him or avoiding him, but it never happened.

God, Harry was thinking the strangest things. The stress really was getting to him.

Malfoy was still waiting for his answer. He remembered thinking that Malfoy’s own answer had been surprisingly honest, and despite what Malfoy had said about his lack of honor, Harry found that he didn’t want to lie or refuse to respond. Some part of him was curious to see if Malfoy would flinch under the weight of his grief like his friends did. He certainly wouldn’t give Harry anything remotely close to their sad, pitying expressions. 

Harry paced along the length of the room. It really was a very small space, and he wished there was something — anything — to look at other than Malfoy, watching him at the center. Harry let his fingertips trail along the wall.

“I went to my godfather’s house today,” he said, carefully choosing his words, and he felt Malfoy straighten alert behind him. “He left it to me, and everything in it. I’d been putting it off for a while, thinking it would be too hard. And it was. Somehow simultaneously like he had never even existed there and as though he was going to pop around the corner at any minute.” 

His words seem to hover in the air. He turned back to Malfoy with a shrug. 

“So I guess I am. Weird and sad or whatever.” 

Malfoy didn’t respond for a minute. He hadn’t reacted at all to Harry’s words, not a single flicker of emotion crossing his face, and now he stared back in the warm and wavering lamplight, shadows dancing over his eyes in the otherwise dark room. Harry briefly wished to take back his words, but they were the mildest possible version of the feelings currently warring inside of him. No more revealing than the truths Malfoy had given up in the common room.

Malfoy finally nodded, a slow shake of his head, as if he was taking it all in. 

“All right,” he said benignly. 

“All right?” Harry parroted, his lips curving up in amusement at such an insubstantial response. 

“Yeah,” Malfoy said, a small smirk on his own lips. “All right.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting! Now that the holidays are over I should be back on a regular schedule. Next update Friday!  
> I'd love to hear your thoughts :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra long chapter since the first half is more plot-heavy than Draco-heavy. Hopefully the second half makes up for it!

Over the next couple of weeks, Ron and Hermione tried to get him to view the memories a dozen times, but the vial remained buried in his sock drawer where he’d stuffed it after returning from the Room of Requirement. Eventually they stopped pushing it, not wanting to pressure him into something he wasn’t ready to do, but it was clear they disapproved.

These days they had little to focus on besides Harry’s so-called “issues,” since the Slytherins’ behavior was no longer a big enough distraction. The weeks after the first detention were devoid of the violence of the start of the year, but they were infinitely stranger. Although some of the younger students were still at each other’s throats, the sixth years had begun to completely avoid each other in the absence of any other idea of how to act. Most of them had never said a single nice word to each other, and now that no one wanted a repeat of The Incident — as their blowout had come to be termed — that meant not saying anything to each other at all. Many of the other students had begun to follow their strange example.

Which wasn’t to say there was no interaction between the two groups at all — that would be wishful thinking. Blaise had made it his personal mission to preen and generally make a fool of himself whenever he was in Ginny’s presence (she had done a remarkable job healing his black eyes, which only seemed to increase his fondness) and he occasionally directed some harmless comments at Harry as he had in his bedroom. Pansy and Hermione were still quite tense whenever they had to be in each other’s company, but Theo now made snide comments behind Harry’s back when he thought he couldn’t hear — rather than before, when he simply said them to Harry’s face.

Their second detention — recoating the cauldrons in the Potions dungeon — had passed without incident. Each of them had simply taken their share and retreated to a different area of the room, cleaning and chatting in small groups of two or three. 

It was a strange adjustment, after the endless fighting of the first two weeks. Half of Harry was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He still looked over his shoulder when he sat in the common room, like someone was lying in wait to attack.

No one outwardly acknowledged the change. They were all just glad that hexes weren’t a daily occurrence anymore. If this was as best as the dynamic of the Tower was going to get, Harry thought he could live with it. 

But on Thursday as the Gryffindors and Slytherins lounged about at their usual common room tables, Ginny looked up from her essay, distracted by Pansy on the verge of tears.

“Would you two shut up?” Pansy moaned, lifting her head from her stack of books to glare at Blaise and Theo’s particularly loud round of Snap. Her hair was mussed up and her eyes a little bloodshot. “I’m never going to finish this in time to get to Charms too. Why did I put it off _ so long? _ ” __

She let her head drop against her textbook with a resounding  _ thud. _ She was already sniffling, the first sign of an impending breakdown. 

Ginny shut her book and held out her hand across the divide between the tables. 

“I’ll do it,” she said easily. 

Blaise looked over, not even reacting when his card burst into flames in his hands. Ron’s head had whipped up from his own essay, looking at Ginny with his mouth open. 

“What?” Pansy said, two tears streaking down her cheeks.

“Arithmancy, right? I know I’m below you, but I used to help Fred and George with theirs. Granted they didn’t manage an OWL, but I reckon I learned more than they did anyways…” She trailed off as she noticed everyone staring.

“Oh come off it, I’m not doing it out of the goodness of my heart,” she said, looking around defensively. “Pansy can do my Transfiguration tomorrow.” 

Pansy wiped a hand over her eye, smearing her mascara across her cheek. Silently, she handed over the assignment.

“Thank you,” she said belatedly, looking a little dazed. Ginny had already bent her head over the page, her quill moving furiously as she copied Pansy’s handwriting with surprising accuracy.

With a few lingering astonished glances, they all went back to their work. 

Some twenty minutes later, Hermione looked up from her Defense essay at Harry and Ron.

“Do you remember Ambrosian’s Third Principle for resisting the Imperius curse?” She frowned, furrowing her brows as she frantically sifted through her papers. “Snape  _ just _ mentioned it. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten.”

Harry only stared back at her. Ron had slept through their last class, and was equally helpless.

It was Pansy, astonishingly, who answered. “When attempting defense by a feigned layer of mentality, the practitioner must believe the altered thoughts to be as true as their own consciousness.” 

When she finished speaking she bit her lip, looking conflicted as though she couldn’t believe she’d said it. No one missed the significance of her words, least of all her Hermione.

“Right,” she said, taken aback. “Of course. Thanks.” 

Hermione’s cheeks were bright red, and Pansy had turned back to her Charms work with a stiff little nod. Harry muffled a snicker. Something about the two groups of sworn enemies trying to be civil was desperately funny. 

When Harry finished his Potions an hour later he stood and joined Blaise for a round of Snap, just so he could watch Ron nearly fall from his seat in horror.

~*~

The incrementally thawing tensions between the houses only made it easier for Harry to spy on Malfoy. This was both a curse and a blessing. Because he quickly realized a problem with his little fixation that he hadn’t considered: that since he spent so much time analyzing his every move, a lot of irrelevant details were bound to slip in. 

On Friday morning over breakfast, he watched Malfoy spread orange marmalade on his toast and thought — easily, casually, as if it was the most normal thought in the world —  _ they must be out of strawberry.  _ He’d almost choked on his eggs. 

But it was inevitable really. Harry simply paid too close attention to him, following his name on the Map or following him literally, sometimes under the Cloak, sometimes boldly out in the open as if he was daring the other boy to notice him. 

Malfoy preferred brass cauldrons, Harry learned, since they were more neutral and non-reactive. He took morning showers and used peppermint flavored toothpaste. He hated carrots, and always ate two helpings of peas. And, much like Hermione did, he was always willing to look over his friends’ essays before they handed them in. 

Unlike with the rest of the Slytherins,  _ their _ open hostility hadn’t thawed, for which Harry was glad. It made it easier to compartmentalize it all in the light of day. However Malfoy rationalized their occasional, somewhat civil interactions, it clearly didn’t carry over into their everyday lives. And however much Harry could sympathize with him when Malfoy was sad and somber and alone, he needed to remember that most of the time Malfoy wasn’t some helpless weakling. Harry was supposed to be figuring out what he was up to, not learning his secret preference for ankle socks over mid-calf length. 

He knew that talking to Malfoy didn’t necessarily further that goal. After all, it wasn’t like Malfoy was ever going to tell him what he was doing, so conversation was rather pointless. But he couldn’t help but feel that if he could only understand Malfoy, that suddenly everything would snap into clarity and he would understand what it is Malfoy was up to.

_ Mental,  _ another part of him thought.  _ You’d have to be evil yourself to ever understand a git like him. _

That didn’t stop him from trying. Instead of going to the Great Hall for lunch, Harry detoured up to his room, where he knew the three boys were hanging out. Inside, Blaise’s long body stretched across Malfoy’s bed (a regular occurrence). Malfoy was sitting cross-legged at the end with a book in his lap. When Harry entered he only gave him a quick glare before returning to his reading.

Under the guise of a mid-afternoon nap, Harry threw himself onto his own bed and shut the curtains, trying to make his presence unobtrusive. It must have worked, because the boys didn't cast a silencing charm.

Whatever Harry had expected to overhear, it wasn’t for them to be discussing Halloween of all things.

“There’s no way we’ll manage a party here,” Theo groaned.

“Maybe we can do it in the dungeons for a night,” Blaise said. “It would be nice to be home again.”

Malfoy snorted. “Crabbe couldn’t plan a party if his life depended on it.”

“And our favorite Gryffindors wouldn’t know fun if it hexed their mother,” Blaise replied. “So we’re fucked either way.” 

The conversation was so perfectly mundane that Harry did actually fall asleep, and found himself bursting into their afternoon double Potions ten minutes late. 

He was doing good detective work, is all. Sure, the things he learned were totally useless, but one day he would discover something important. He was sure of it. 

Checking the Map had become more of a compulsion than a useful tactic, but Harry couldn’t help himself. Later that Friday, as he was heading down for dinner, he unfolded the Map and began to scour the campus.

He froze in the middle of the flow of traffic, forcing the students to push around him. Harry hadn’t forgotten about his goal to find Malfoy in the Room of Requirement, he just had yet to catch the boy there again. But now undoubtedly there he was, standing alone in the seventh floor corridor. After another moment, his name disappeared as he entered the Room.

“No lingering in the halls!” McGonagall announced, standing at the doors to the Great Hall. She looked tenser than usual, her frown forming deep creases along the lines of her face. “Inside for dinner, now, let’s go!” 

Harry ignored that, pivoting quickly before she could spot him and heading back the way he came. He was moving against the flow of traffic, worming his way through the crowd to the staircase. 

But he had only made it to the second floor when he caught sight of Ron and Hermione, looking frantic and disheveled as they barreled down the stairs.

Hermione saw him first, and grabbed Ron’s arm with a gasp. “There he is, Ron!”

Harry froze on the lip of the stairs as they raced towards him. Before he could even get out a startled “what,” Ron had grabbed his arm and began to drag him bodily away from the staircase, down a deserted hallway and into the nearest cupboard 

The cupboard was dark and dank, and they were much too big to fit. They squished chest-to-chest as Ron shut the door.

“What the hell is going on—?”

“Lumos,” Hermione cast, illuminating their severe expressions.

“Do you have the Cloak?” Ron demanded.

“What?”

“Harry,  _ do you have it _ ?”

“Merlin, yes, here!” He bent down as best as he could and pulled it from his bag, just in the hopes that they would calm down. “Now would you tell me what’s happened?”

Hermione threw the Cloak over them, extinguishing her wand.

“There’s been an attack, in Hogsmeade,” she said, shoving open the door. 

“What? Tonight?” Harry demanded, shuffling along under the Cloak so they would remain hidden.

“Mum sent me a Patronus.” Ron’s voice was tight and wavering. “Wanted me to know, since half my bloody family is reporting right into the mess of it.” Under the cover of the Cloak, he was very pale. 

“That’s all we know,” Hermione said. 

“Okay. Let’s go,” Harry replied, immediately on board.

They made their way to the One-Eyed Witch statue and quickly entered. Ron threw off the Cloak and shoved it at Harry, quickening his pace.

“You take it Harry, we already decided.” 

“No,” he insisted automatically. It felt too wrong. He hadn’t had the time to really think about what they were doing, but he knew it was somewhere between “reckless” and “wantonly suicidal.” They didn’t even know how many Death Eaters were there.

“It might be over already, Harry,” Hermione rationalized. “But it will do no good for anyone if they spot you. How many Death Eaters do you think will show up then?”

Any further argument died with that. Harry knew she was right.

They made the rest of the trip in silence. They were practically running now, tripping and stumbling over the uneven ground of the tunnel, and when they finally made it to the stone steps up to Honeydukes’, they were sweating and heaving for breath.

The three friends gave each each other a tense, wordless stare. 

“Be careful,” Harry whispered, feeling sick. 

With a short nod, Hermione climbed the stairs and pushed open the trapdoor.

The cellar was very dark. They threw themselves up the staircase as fast as possible. When they stumbled out into Honeydukes, Mr. Flume jumped out from behind his desk with a gasp, his wand pointed. On the floor, huddled as far behind the counter as she could, Mrs. Flume was crying.

“I’ll hex you!” he shouted, his low lip quivering. Then his face smoothed out in recognition. “You’re just students, aren’t you?” 

They turned and strode from the shop. 

The street was in chaos. Across the road under the awning for the Post Office, the body of a young man was lying prone on the ground. A woman clutched at his chest, hysterical, raising her wand and casting again and again in vain attempt to heal him. There was a light haze of smoke hanging in the air, smelling of charred flesh and the sharp sting of dark magic. Far away, a more frenzied kind of shouting drifted down the street.

“Come on,” Hermione said, tearing her stare from the young man with a shudder.

Harry followed behind them under the Cloak as they raced up the street, wands drawn, looking over their shoulders constantly. The front of Zonko’s was completely gone, the wood blown away in ragged blasts. As they ran by, a shot of sparks whizzed by their heads, hitting the remains of the storefront in an explosion of red light.

They turned, ducking on instinct. Down the side street before the Hog’s Head, half a dozen Death Eaters and Order member’s were engaged in frantic, desperate duels. Harry saw George and Fred’s red heads next to each other, shooting hexes at Augustus Rookwood.

But that couldn’t be. Rookwood was imprisoned; he had been sentenced to ten years after the Battle at the Ministry. On the other side of the road, Mrs. Weasley  _ Stupefied _ her opponent, sending him soaring onto his back. From the new angle, Harry recognized the man as Antonin Dolohov. Who had been imprisoned since the First War.

Ron and Hermione froze, likely coming to the same conclusion: the Death Eaters had broken out of Azkaban. But when he looked over at them, they weren’t staring at the fighting. 

They were looking up at the roof of the Hog’s Head, at the young woman up there. Her hands were neatly folded in front of her dress, her ankles crossed. She might have looked asleep, if it weren’t from the rope around her neck, dangling her over the street. Her hair hung in limp, blood-stained strands down her neck. And at the center of her chest was a massive gaping wound, where, through the bones of her ribcage, snakes writhed and slithered.

His stomach gave a sick lurch before Harry wrenched his eyes away. 

“Let’s go,” he said under his breath, pushing his shoulder against his friends as he shoved past them. The sight lingered behind his eyelids each time he blinked.

Dolohov had just regained his footing. He staggered up, turning to face Mrs. Wealsey’s back as she battled another masked wizard.

“ _ Avada Kedavra!”  _ he shouted.

The force of Ron and Harry’s combined  _ Protego _ neutralize the curse as it dissolved in a flash of harmless green light. Mrs. Weasley turned, her eyes wide, and saw Ron.

“ _ Incarcerous _ ,” Moody fired. Thick ropes appeared, shooting around Dolohov, who twisted and Disapparated with ease before they could bind him. With a loud crack, he reappeared on the roof of Scrivenshaft’s, leering down at them.

“ _ Ronald Billius Weasley _ !” Mrs. Weasley’s voice carried over the fighting. She wasn’t looking at him any more, furiously casting hexes at her earlier opponent, but she was talented enough to multitask. “You get back to that castle  _ this instant! _ ”

Hermione had thrown herself into Tonks’ fight, pushing back at the Death Eater with everything she had. Everything was moving too fast for Harry to tell if any of them were winning. In the center of the street, another body lay motionless on the ground, and, somewhere behind them, a fire raged. Someone was screaming. It sounded like a child. 

Then Dolohov reappeared again, this time on top of the Hog’s Head. With a wave of his wand, the inside of the Inn caught flame. He could see the orange light flare through the windows.

“Alastair!” Hestia Jones shouted. “Inside!” 

There were too many faces he couldn't find on the street. Hestia’s words were all the confirmation he needed that they were people inside the building. Under the cover of the Cloak, he darted around the fights and dashed into the Hog’s Head.

Black smoke had already filled the Inn, thick and choking. Harry’s eyes began to water immediately, nearly blinding him as they prickled uncomfortably. He stumbled through the smoke, looking for bodies.

Then, from upstairs, the distinct sound of someone pounding on a door.

Harry raced up the stairs, throwing off the Cloak after he nearly tripped over the fabric.

“Alohomora,” he fired at the door as soon as it was in view, but the door stayed firmly shut. He grabbed the doorknob, pushing with all his might even as the burning hot metal seared the skin of his palm. But it didn’t budge. 

“ _ Help! _ ” someone screeched from inside, their voice twisting upwards with panic. “ _ Help me!” _

Harry spun around, looking for something solid to batter a door. Then, as his wand almost dropped from his slick palm, he felt foolish.

“Stand back!” he shouted through the door.

He lifted his wand, preparing to blast the whole wall down.

Then the stairs creaked behind him, just the smallest noise over the roar of the fire, but the hair on the back of Harry’s neck stood up. Without thinking about it, he threw himself to the ground. 

A ball of fire soared past the place where his head had just been. He shoved himself up onto his feet, squinting through the haze to see Bellatrix Lestrange cresting the stairwell, smiling maniacally down at him.

“You weren’t so quick on your feet the last time I saw you, Baby Potter,” she crooned. 

“ _ Stupef–!” _

_ “Expulso!”  _ Bellatrix fired back, casting aside his own spell effortlessly. Her curse landed before Harry could even think of deflecting it, throwing him back against the wall. His breath rushed out of him at the force of it, his head snapping back against the wood with a sick snap. 

He fell to the ground, gasping for breath, as Bellatrix stalked forward. 

“How I wish I could be the one to turn your pathetic little face into dust,” she hissed. Harry reached out for his wand, which had rolled a few feet away. His fingers had just curled around the wood when, with a swipe of her wand, searing pain sliced through his hand. With a strangled cry, he looked down to see a deep red gash bloom on the palm of his hand, as blood began to gush from the wound. When he grabbed for his wand again, it jerked out of his grasp at the pain, rolling further away.

“Go on,” Bellatrix jeered. “Pick it up.”

He looked up at her, hoping his stare conveyed the depth of his rage. He scrambled forward on his knees, reaching out for it again.

Her foot came down with a savage weight on his hand. He felt the pressure ground his wound against the floor, felt a knuckle pop out of place, and his vision blacked out.

“Oh, Potter, I remembered you so much feistier! What a pity.” 

She removed her foot. Behind the door, the girl was still shrieking, though Harry could barely hear it over the roaring in his own ears. Already wasted on a pain, he grabbed his wand and fired.

“ _ Stupefy!” _

Bellatrix deflected it with a cackle.

“My, I’m bored already.  _ Incarcerous.” _

Instantly he was bound, the ropes pulling his arms behind his back and his legs together. He flopped uselessly onto his back, staring up into Bellatrix’s face. 

She leaned down, smirking over him. “Nice try,” she mocked.

_ “Expelliarmus!”  _ a voice shouted from behind her. Before she could react, her wand soared from her grip. 

With an inhuman shriek, she Disapparated.

Remus ran over to Harry, easily dissolving his bounds. Harry pushed up onto his knees. 

“Remus,” he gasped, “the door. Someone’s in there!”

Remus blasted open the door. A young woman stumbled out, coughing and choking for breath, shallow burns covering the exposed plane of her shoulder. She was sobbing, hysterical choked screams, as she clutched at Remus. 

“It’s alright,” he said. Then, looking into the room full of solid flame, “We have to go.” 

Harry followed him out. On the street below, the battle was finally over. Moody and Hestia were shooting arcs of water at the flames, aiming into the open window. The Weasley’s were gathered across the street, looking rumpled but otherwise fine. With a slash of his wand, Dumbledore cut the rope and levitated the hanging woman gracefully down to the ground.

_ Dumbledore.  _ Harry briefly considered putting the Cloak back on, but he had surely seen Ron and Hermione already. 

Harry was almost thrown off his feet as Mrs. Weasley barreled into his arms.

“Oh, thank you, my darling boy!” she howled, crying warm tears against his neck. Then she pulled back with a scowl. “But if you ever pull a stunt so reckless, so unbelievable  _ idiotic _ , I will chain you to the Whomping Willow for a week!”

“Alright, Mrs. Weasley,” he said weakly. He still felt Bellatrix’s ropes against his skin. 

The Order members had gathered around the young woman. Someone, likely Dumbeldore, had vanished the snakes and closed the skin of her chest, closing her dress over the wound. 

“Leona Dagsworth,” he said solemnly. “She was working at the Inn in exchange for lodging. A Muggleborn, three months pregnant with her first child with a Muggle from London.” 

Hermione looked away with a tremor. 

“Was she the target?” Arthur Weasley asked quietly. 

“We cannot know,” Dumbledore answered. Then he looked up from the girl, looking directly into Harry’s eyes. He looked him over, his gaze holding on his hand, where Harry could feel warm blood dripping down his pant leg.

Dumbledore turned to Remus, not before — with a silent flick of his wand no one else seemed to notice — the skin of Harry’s palm knitted closed.

“Lupin, if you would see our students back to the castle.” 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed Remus without complaint. Back by the Post Office, the woman lay dead over the young man, still clutching his hand desperately. 

They walked the long passage back to the castle in silence. 

~*~

Ginny was waiting for them in the common room, pacing in front of the fireplace. When they opened the door, her head snapped over to them, her wide eyes desperate. At the sight of them, her face froze.

“Are they alright?” she whispered as they trudged miserably into the common room.

Ron nodded silently. 

“Oh, you  _ idiots!”  _ Ginny howled, launching herself at Ron. She clutched him in a desperate hug, her fingers digging into his back.

“We’ve heard it all from mum, Ginny.”

“I can't believe—!”

“We know,” Hermione said. “It was stupid and reckless and idiotic.”

Ginny scoffed, pulling back from Ron.

“I can’t believe you didn’t take me with you!” she finished.

The three friends looked at each other. Then they began to laugh, sad, strange little giggles.

Harry hugged Ginny close, tremendously glad they hadn’t had to return with bad news. Nearly her entire family had been out there today. 

And still, that poor dead woman. Leona, he reminded himself. Her and her child, dead, because of their blood status. And the man and woman dead on the street, in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The door opened behind them. In a split second, Hermione vanished the blood from their clothes as their classmates appeared in the doorway.

“Did you hear?” Katie Bell gasped. “Hogsmeade’s under attack.” 

They mustered up appropriate surprise at the news. The students collapsed around the fireplace, the Gryffindors looking a little dazed at the news, the Slytherins, awkward and out of place. Some of them, almost guilty. 

“Hogsmeade is only twenty minutes from the castle,” Daphne whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. 

“I just wish we could  _ do _ something,” Romilda Vane cried. 

Harry and his friends looked at each other uneasily, standing behind the couches. Harry inclined his head towards the dormitory, and they quietly slipped away from the group.

Only Malfoy noticed them go, catching Harry’s eye for the briefest moment, looking at Harry like he knew exactly where he had been and what he had been doing.

~*~

The four of them crawled into Harry’s bed, sitting cross legged knee-to-knee in a little square, and cast a silencing charm. After they told Ginny everything they’d seen, and reacted with appropriate horror at Harry’s close call with Bellatrix, Hermione got her signature pensive look.

“If the Ministry covered up another breakout,” she said, “then they’re going to have to cover some of this up too.” 

Ron nodded. “Mum and Dad were already talking about it. Dumbledore says they’ll only report the Death Eaters at large as having been there and that they’ll say there were no casualties.” 

No one had anything to say to that. Harry looked down at his lap with a frown. He would be seeing that poor girl in his nightmares for a long time, he was sure.

“Why Hogsmeade?” Ginny wondered. “Why now?”

“Do they need a reason?” Ron shot back. “You read the Prophet. There are attacks almost every day.”

“I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner,” Hermione agreed. 

“They’re only getting stronger,” Harry whispered, picking at the skin of his thumb instead of meeting his friend’s eyes. “How many more people are going to die?”

They sat in silence. Finally Harry looked up into their crestfallen faces.

“It’s never going to end, is it?” 

“Don’t say that,” Hermione whispered, but then she looked down with a frown, knowing there was truth in his words.

Ginny threw her hands up. “I mean, what the fuck is Dumbledore doing? Twiddling his thumbs and eating plum cakes while the world burns?”

“We can’t trust  _ Dumbledore _ to end this,” Harry said, his voice insistent. “I don’t think he even cares about the casualties anymore.”

“He has to be doing something, Harry,” Ron said. “He wanted to show you some story at the beginning of the year. And something happened to his hand…”

“Yeah,” Harry snorted. “Because he thinks I need to understand where Voldemort began to know how to defeat him. Well, sorry if I don’t really care about his tragic backstory. I’m sure how he became like this would have been a great comfort to Leona Dagsworth.” 

But Ron’s words had Harry thinking of his earlier meeting with Dumbledore for the first time in a while. He’d had what he’d wanted to show Harry already set out in the vial, unlike in fourth year when the memories had been swirling around in the basin. Maybe, like Sirius, he had kept the memories somewhere safe, so that even if he was dead, the knowledge would survive. 

He had viewed Dumbledore’s memories without permission in fourth year, so he knew it was as easy as sticking his head into the Pensieve. If he was right, and Dumbledore had set aside the memories he wanted to show Harry… 

“You might not be wrong, Ron,” Harry mused. “There might be something important in those memories. I mean, Dumbledore was still jerking me around about them, wanting to show me them on his own schedule, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have wasted my time with something unimportant.”

Ron nodded, but Hermione gazed back at him with narrowed eyes.

“What exactly are you saying?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m going to break into his office as soon as I can and poke around.”

Ginny grinned beside him, the first smile she’d cracked since they’d returned, but Hermione, for once, was speechless. She blinked back at him wordlessly, and then rubbed a hand over her eyes.

“I suppose there’s no point arguing with you at this point,” she said wearily. “You never listen anyways.” 

Ron bumped his knee against hers, looking at her fondly. If Hermione was giving him implicit permission to go for it, there must be some merit in the idea.

“Well, at least we have a plan,” he said. “Although I don’t know when we’d ever be able to get in his office.”

“He’s gone all the time,” Ginny piped in. “Constantly leaving the castle, for days at a time. Haven’t you noticed?”

Harry looked over at Ron. He shrugged back.

“Seriously, I don’t know how you’ve survived this long,” she sighed. “I’ll tell you next time he’s gone.”

“Brilliant.” 

The group disbanded then. Harry stayed in bed with his curtains closed; he didn’t particularly want to talk to his dormmates tonight, or risk ruining the progress they’d made by ignoring them or being rude. 

He curled up on his side and stared at his curtains until no more light filtered in through the gap. His blood was still pumping with too much adrenaline for sleep to be even a remote possibility. With an intensity that still took him by surprise after all this time, he felt that familiar, crippling numbness spread through his chest.

Because he had meant it. He really wasn’t sure at this point if it was ever going to end.

How much more were they going to lose? The Weasley’s had made it out unscathed today, but would they next time? The time after that? Would Remus, or Moody, or Tonks? And now it wasn’t just the Order he had to worry about. His friends had charged into battle without a moment’s hesitation. Were Ron and Hermione going to survive the war? 

It was easy to feel like they were invincible when they were kids. When it was as simple as Dumbledore being the good guy, so of course he would win. He wondered if Remus thought that once, too. Then he had watched his best friends die one by one.

For the first time in a while, he closed his eyes and retreated into a familiar fantasy: his parents, alive, walking him through Diagon Alley for a weekend shopping trip. A simple, mundane afternoon; and yet, it was his greatest desire in the world.

Then, with a shock, he realized he didn’t have to imagine. He could see his parents for real if he wanted to. 

After taking a moment to ensure that everyone was in bed, Harry padded out of bed over to his dresser. He didn’t let himself think too long about what he was doing, or else he’d chicken out, like he’d been doing for weeks. 

Sitting back down on his bed, he Engorged the Pensieve to its normal size, poured the vial in, and dived.

So much light and sound assaulted him when he landed in the memory that it took a moment for him to realize where he was. Then the familiar sight of the Quidditch stands filtered in, so packed that it could only be the Quidditch Cup. Around him, students with painted faces screamed, a deafening roar. 

Harry turned and came face-to-face with a young Sirius. Blindly, he reached out and grabbed the railing. Every moment he stared at his beautiful face was agony, and yet he couldn't look away. Sirius was grinning so wide his face could have split open, grabbing the boy next to him and jerking him around like a ragdoll. 

Harry had never seen him so happy — not for one moment, not in the entire time he’d known him.

_ “We won, we won, we won, we won _ !” he half-screamed, half-singsonged, jumping up and down on the spot. Next to him, Remus Lupin laughed hysterically.

“Let go of me, you loon!” 

Harry turned, searching over the pitch. His father wasn’t hard to spot. He was riding his broom with no hands, zipping as fast as a Snitch up and down the pitch to the cheers of the crowd.

He flew by, so close that Harry got a flash of his familiar face before he flew past. 

_ Dad,  _ he thought helplessly.

The next time James passed by, he swung down low over the crowd. The Gryffindors gave a collective gasp and they ducked their heads. Only Sirius remained unflinching, reaching upwards as James passed. Their fingertips brushed.

Then James swung back around. This time, Harry realized what his father was doing: trying to pull Sirius up onto his broom. He couldn’t help but smile. 

Their hands gripped each other’s solidly this time, but James was going too fast to do anything but drag Sirius along with him, dangling from the broom by James’ hand. The crowd gasped again, but then the memory blurred as they moved down the pitch, Harry in the stands unable to follow.

The memory sharpened as they passed by. Sirius was cackling like a madman, even though half of their classmates were watching him like he was about to plummet to an early death. 

Sirius had kicked one leg over the broom and was desperately trying to pull himself up. 

“Hey Prongs! You won!”

“Yeah!” 

They zoomed down the pitch, and now that Sirius had managed to get on the broom, James twisted them around and around in perfect barrel-turns. The sound of their joyous screams faded away as the memory dissolved… 

They were in a Gryffindor dorm room. With a quick glance around the room, Harry could easily identify each of the four boys’ beds as their own. He looked at James’ rumpled sheets, the Cloak thrown over the side.  _ That’s where my dad slept. _

In the corner, the boys stood in a huddle. Harry approached quietly, like he might somehow disturb them.

Remus was sitting on the bed with his shirt unbuttoned. Next to him, Sirius was biting his lip, looking guilty and conflicted. James and Peter watched stoically from the foot of the bed. And, sitting in front of Remus, lifting a cloth to the long, red gash across his chest…

“Oh Remus. Why didn’t you tell Madam Pomfrey?” his mother said as she cleaned his wound. Remus flinched just slightly at the press of the cloth. 

“Figured she might realize it was Sirius’ claws that did it, not mine.”

Sirius jumped up to his feet, throwing his hands into his hair. 

“I’m so sorry, Remus! Honestly, I didn’t even know—”

“Really, Padfoot,” James said, “we all know you guys like to play rough.”

Remus nodded eagerly. “I barely felt it either till I changed back, honest.”

Harry was only half listening to their conversation. Mostly he was staring at Lily, who was dutifully cleaning Remus’s wounds.

“I wish I knew more healing spells,” she sighed.

“You’re brilliant, Lils,” Remus encouraged.

She was so stunningly beautiful. Harry knew this, he had seen pictures, but it was different to see her  _ alive _ before him. The soft furrow of her brows, the gentle press of her free hand against Remus’s, so worried that she was hurting him. 

Then, once she had pressed a clean white bandage to the cut, she turned with a flash of red hair to glare up at Sirius.

“I mean really,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “you boys fight every day of the month as  _ humans _ . You can’t control yourself for one night as a dog?”

Sirius grinned back at her. “Remus started it. Tried to steal the bird I was chasing.”

“You better mean a literal bird, you jackass,” she swatted him in the chest.

“I tried to stop them,” James interjected, watching Lily with a forlorn expression. 

“Please,” Sirius joked. “You were too busy sulking cause you can’t run as fast as us.”

“You take that back!”

James lunged at him as Sirius threw himself out of the way, proving Lily’s point wonderfully. They chased each other around the bedroom, hurling books and blankets in each other’s path. 

Lily moved closer to Remus and threw an arm around his shoulder. James and Sirius hit the ground with a thud, wrestling viciously. Remus wound his arm gingerly around Lily’s waist, pulling her closer, as she placed a kiss on the top of his head.

Harry’s heart clenched painfully. He took an instinctive step closer. It was madness: she was here, right here, why couldn’t she just  _ see  _ him? Why couldn’t she touch him, hold him, kiss  _ his  _ head? They stood so easily in each other’s embrace, while Harry watched on in agony, having no memory of what it felt like to have his mother’s arms around him.

Distantly, he realized he was crying. Sirius had chosen beautiful, happy memories for Harry to see, and they hurt so badly that he couldn’t breathe. They had all been so happy, so carefree. They would be dead in a few short years… Harry didn’t even exist yet… Better if he never had… His parents would have had a whole lifetime of these moments together, if only he’d never been born… 

The tears ran thicker down his fast, hot and fast, so it took him a moment to realize the memory had begun to dissolve. 

“ _ No!”  _ he cried out senselessly, reaching out to her. 

_ Don’t go, _ he wanted to say, which was foolish, because she was already gone. She had been gone for a very long time.

“No!”

A hand wrapped around his arm, firm and demanding, yanking him backwards. It felt like he was falling upwards, dragged backwards through the silvery swirls. Only when he emerged from the Pensieve, gasping in his bed, did he realize that the hand was pulling him from the real world not the memory.

He jerked back, nearly falling from his bed, as he blinked the tears from his eyes. Wildly he looked around the darkened room to see Malfoy standing next to his bed, looking down at him with stunned, unblinking eyes. 

Harry tried to catch his breath. The memory had felt so real, and now he could hardly comprehend the cold, dark dorm room around him. He looked back at Malfoy, still feeling his cool grip on his arm, furiously swiping at the fresh tears pouring down his face.

Malfoy opened his mouth, and then closed it. 

“You were screaming,” he finally said, in a strange, detached tone. He looked down at the Pensieve, still swirling, and then back into Harry’s face.

Harry sniffled. “Right.” His voice was scratchy and raw. He felt dizzy. “Sorry. If I woke you.”

Malfoy only stood there. Then he seemed to shake himself out of it.

“You didn’t,” he said. He turned and went back to bed.

Harry cast a silencing charm, and then he sobbed himself to sleep.

~*~

It hadn’t been a mistake; that much, he wanted to be clear on. He knew that he was going to be rewatching those memories for the rest of his life, and whatever other ones he didn’t get to finish watching. He was so wildly grateful to Sirius, for this last gift he had given him, he could hardly stand it.

It had just been hard — of course it had been. With the war pressing down on Harry in the present, he was regarding the past with more and more bitterness. James, his recklessness, his mischief, his wild joy. And Lily, her warm compassion, and that fiery streak of hers. What kind of world would leave the two of them rotting in the ground, while Peter, or Snape, or  _ Voldemort _ lived and breathed?

If he thought the day couldn’t get any worse, he was proven wrong by the sight of McGonagall waiting for them in the common room after breakfast.

Blaise groaned through a yawn, in what was frankly a rude gesture. “Don’t we have more important things to worry about, Professor?”

“Yes, Mr. Zabini,” McGonagall bit back, “the adults do. But if you’ll recall the childish behavior that landed you here, you are not one of them.”

Pansy and Ginny snickered at that. They followed McGonagall without further argument for their latest cruel and unusual punishment. When they realized where they were headed, there was a collective moan.

McGonagall corralled them into the Owlery with a smile. 

“I’m sure I don’t have to explain what you’ll be doing today,” she said. “Please hand over your wands.”

“Are you sure we should be left unarmed, Professor?” Blaise tried again, when it was his turn to hand his wand over. “You know, given the circumstances.”

McGonagall was not amused. “I know the owls can get quite nippy, Mr. Zabini, but I’m quite sure you can handle them,” she replied tartly, deliberately missing his meaning. 

The story had been front page in the Prophet this morning. The students crowded around each other at breakfast, sharing the copies that Owl Post delivered. Harry seethed as he read the heavily edited story, which claimed that Death Eaters had caused a “disturbance” in the small village, but had been quickly expelled by Dumbledore and other “Ministry employees.”

It wasn’t right. The people who had died yesterday deserved the world to know what had really happened. They deserved for their deaths to be met with outrage, not swept under the rug. They wouldn’t even get an obituary. Other than Leona, Harry didn’t even know their names.

The Slytherins had mixed reactions. Daphne had burst into tears at the thought of a fight raging so close to Hogwarts, while Theo was — predictably — unbothered. Malfoy read the article with a terse frown. He, out of all of them, probably knew best that this wasn’t the full story. If his mother hadn’t told him already. They frequently spoke through fire-call, although Harry had never been able to eavesdrop again.

“This blows,” Pansy groaned, lifting her rake to see a mouse carcass dangling from one of the prongs. “This smell is going to make me sick.”

“You clearly haven’t been around Nott after a few two many bean curds.” Blaise grinned, and then immediately regretted his words when Theo made to throw his pan of owl droppings at him.

The mess was really quite horrendous. The droppings mixed in with the layer of hay covering the ground to form thick, matted sheets, and with the season’s first chill settling in, the whole mess had solidified overnight. He wondered if Snape had any hand in coming up with the detentions; this seemed like his particular brand of punishment. 

Maybe it was the miserableness of the task that had their minds drifting to unpleasant things.

Daphne had taken a break and was staring out the window of the tower, where Hogsmeade could be seen in the distance.

“Do you think they’ll come here next?” she said, frowning.

She didn't have to elaborate on who  _ they  _ were. The steady sound of raking stopped as the group looked around at each other. They were the worst mix of people to be talking about this subject. Half of them had families loyal to Voldemort, while the other half had fought against them themselves. 

Harry supposed that divide wasn’t totally true. Daphne seemed firmly against him, and as far as he knew, Blaise’s mother never picked a side. He didn’t know about Pansy, although she definitely supported Voldemort’s ideas on blood purity. 

That only left Nott, whose father was a confirmed Death Eater, and Malfoy, who was a Death Eater himself. He knew yesterday should have only solidified his hatred for Malfoy; he could barely look at Nott without seeing the poor woman hanging from the Hog’s Head. That was the normal reaction. And yet, when he looked at Malfoy… 

Against all reason, something told him there was more to the story. 

So that meant there was only one person in the room he really hated for supporting Voldemort. And the rest of them, maybe… were just kids. 

Harry tried to sound sure when he said, “No way. Hogwarts is the safest place we can be.” 

That seemed to break the tension of the subject a little bit. 

Blaise grinned. “Well, there’s one good thing to come out of yesterday.”

Harry tried to remind himself that Blaise didn’t know what had really happened in Hogsmeade. Hermione, clearly less sympathetic, stiffened. 

“And what’s that?” she said sharply.

“Now no one can go to Hogsmeade! So we’re not missing out.” 

“That’s not true,” Daphne said. “A lot of the students have signed on to help repair some of the damage that was done.”

“Exactly,” Blaise snorted. “Bor-ring.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Because raking up owl dung is so much more exciting.”

Pansy paused in the middle of polishing one of the pedestals. Then, with a carefully nonchalant shrug, she said, “Maybe it is. I have a bottle of firewhiskey in my room we could crack open after we’re done tonight. Burn the memory of this bloody detention from our brains.”

Harry looked at his friends surreptitiously, trying to gauge their reactions. Pansy was clearly trying very hard to act like she wouldn’t care if they all shot her down, but Harry knew it meant something that she had offered at all. The Slytherins did too; they were looking at her in open shock.

Ginny cleared her throat. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, sounds brilliant. Right guys?”

Harry smirked as he took in Ron’s expression. Harry himself was trying to imagine any of the Slytherin’s letting loose enough to get drunk, and was failing spectacularly. He kind of wanted to see it. 

“Sure,” he said. Hermione nodded stiffly next to him.

“Cool,” Pansy said, turning back to her work. She snapped her rag in Malfoy’s direction, causing him to jump. “I expect you to be there.”

He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

“No excuses! I know firewhiskey is your favorite, so you have no way out!”

With a heaving sigh, he said, “Fine. One drink.”

“You say that now,” she teased, and then she straightened thoughtfully. “Can we do it in your room, boys? If you come to ours we’ll have to include Millicent, and I hate to ruin a nice evening with that hag.” 

Hermione laughed; on that front, the two girls could agree. Plus, it was funny seeing the Slytherins disparage each other for once, instead of the Gryffindors. 

“Might as well just go for the common room,” Daphne said. “Half the prefects are in this room and I don’t want to hear Draco’s endless moaning when Blaise inevitably pukes on his sheets.” 

The prospect of alcohol seemed to put everyone in good spirits, which made the day move much faster. They finished their work an hour earlier than they had with the cauldrons, which given the task at hand was really saying something. McGonagall approved their job and dismissed them early. 

“This is weird, right?” Ron said on the way down to dinner, fiddling with his tie. “I mean, we’re not  _ friends  _ with them. You don’t drink with people you’re not friends with.”

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. “I certainly prefer this to all the shit they gave us the last five years.”

“I guess,” Ron grumbled noncommittally. 

“It’ll probably go miserably anyways,” Harry added happily, “and then we can all go back to hating each other.”

That cheered Ron up.

They took a long walk by the lake after dinner, and when they finally made it back to the common room it was dark, and a party of Slytherins were waiting for them. 

“Oh, thank the gods!” Pansy exclaimed. “Theo has already inhaled half the thing.”

“I have not!” he defended, but when he held up the bottle, about a third of it was gone.

They were sprawled out around the fire; Pansy on the floor on her stomach, Daphne and Blaise on the couch, Theo stumbling across the rug with the bottle, and Malfoy staring into the fire, his small frame dwarfed by the massive armchair. 

_ This is so bloody weird. _

Harry chuckled goodnaturedly as he came around the sofa, plopping down next to Blaise like it was the most normal thing in the world to be spending their Saturday night together. With a flick of her wand, Pansy turned the record player on, and a loud rock sound began to blare.

“That’s okay,” Harry said, regarding the state of the firewhiskey. “We’re a bunch of lightweights anyway.”

“Speak for yourself!” Blaise stuck out his hand for the bottle.

Hermione was standing next to the couch, biting her lip. 

“I think I can help with that,” she said, and then she turned and disappeared up the stairs.

They didn’t have to wonder where she went for long. She came right back, holding a bottle in her hands.

“Hermione Granger,” Ron said in disbelief, “you’ve been holding out on us.”

“I don’t believe it,” Blaise said.

Hermione smiled. “Well, my parents gave it to me to save for exams… but we deserve it after that bloody detention!”

Pansy pushed up on an elbow, looking up at Hermione from the floor. “What is it?” 

She shifted from one foot to the other. “Um — it’s just some Muggle wine, really.”

Blaise snorted, but the sound died off with Daphne’s glare. There was a moment of silence, the Gryffindors looking around carefully. It seemed their next was about to blow up even sooner than they thought.

Then Blaise pushed himself to his feet, stumbling just slightly, and declared, “Let’s see what those Muggles are made of!” 

The tension deflated very quickly after that. Half an hour later, Harry was feeling pleasantly warm reclining on the couch, watching his classmates make fools of themselves. On one of the study tables, Ginny and Blaise were playing a game that involved levitating shots into each other’s mouths. By now, they were wearing more of the alcohol than they’d consumed, and kept having to charm their clothes dry (with decreasing success). 

Hermione had taken up Blaise’s spot next to Daphne, which was no surprise, since she was the only Slytherin who was regularly nice to her. Daphne was watching Hermione speak with a stunned expression.

“They drill  _ into your gums?  _ That must be awful!” 

“Well, they numb it first, so you can’t feel it.”

“With a Potion?”

Hermione giggled. “Sort of…”

Hermione continued to explain the finer points of Muggle dentistry to a fascinated Daphne. Theo, Ron, and Pansy were playing gobstones on the floor. As Harry watched, the stone spurted a putrid yellow liquid at Ron, who groaned and took a sip of his drink. When some of the liquid dripped into his mouth along with the alcohol, he jumped up to his feet.

“Should have never agreed to this blasted game!” 

“Oh, you only say that because you’re losing,” Pansy teased.

But Ron couldn’t be convinced. He stumbled away from the game over to Blaise and Ginny. Sensing trouble, Harry shoved off the couch and followed.

Malfoy had joined their game, although more to criticize their approach than to play with them. As Harry reached the table, he Levitated his glass with perfect precision, the liquid falling in a perfect arc into his mouth. 

“That’s exactly how I did it, Malfoy, you aren’t special!” Ginny giggled when Malfoy rolled his eyes.

“Oh yes, your soaking wet shirt proves that very well.”

Ron crossed his arms. “Why are you looking at her shirt, Malfoy?” 

“Only cause she smells like the floor of the Three Broomsticks!”

Harry chuckled and downed his drink, which Blaise promptly refilled, splashing a little over the rim. He looked up at Harry with a dazed grin.

“Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. My aim is as bad as a Chudley Chaser.” 

“You take that back,” Ron seethed. 

“You try,  _ Ronald,”  _ Blaise drawled, “if you’re so torn up about it.”

He slid a shot across the table at Ron. Ron cleared his throat and pointed his wand.

_ “Wingardium Leviosa! _ ” 

The glass shot upwards towards his mouth. Only when he went to tip it in did it suddenly jerk out of control, splashing the liquid all over his face, which he promptly inhaled.

“It burns!” he shrieked as the firewhiskey shot up his nose. Blaise laughed so hard he tripped over a chair, sprawling onto the carpet next to Pansy and Theo.  Ron had coughed up the last of the whiskey. He turned to Blaise, still rolling on the floor in laughter, with his hands on his hips. When his laughter subsided, Blaise stuck a hand out in the air up at Ron.

“Alright, Weasley?” he said, his grin infectious.

Ron tried to hold his stern expression, but then a smirk cracked through.

“Oh whatever,” he said, hauling Blaise to his feet. 

Their game only went on a few minutes longer before Ginny announced the last shot, holding the near-empty firewhiskey up in the air with a frown. Daphne rolled her eyes and said, “You lot are wizards, right?” and promptly refilled the bottle with a flick of her wand.

An hour later, it was almost empty again. More of them now congregated around Daphne and Hermione, their expressions ranging from confusion to disgust as Hermione tried to explain why Theo toilet plunging the windows that first detention had been so funny.

“They use it to  _ clear their own shite? _ ” Pansy screeched. “Merlin’s beard, they’re a bunch of savages!”

“Actually,” Hermione explained with a grin, “Wizard plumbing is based completely on the Muggle invention.”

“And yet, you never see Moaning Myrtle scraping her shit from the pipes.” 

“Muggles don’t  _ scrape  _ it either,” Ron rolled his eyes, “and I don’t think Myrtle shits anyways…”

Blaise, however, had a thoughtful look on his face. 

“It seems,” he said, his words slurring together just slightly, “that there’s a whole untapped business venture there.”

Pansy almost choked on her wine. “In plunging toilets?!” 

“No, you rat,” Blaise shot back, ducking when she tried to punch him for the term. “I just mean, you’d think Muggles might want to hire wizards for a day, come by and straighten the whole place out with a little magic.” 

Harry grinned as he stretched his feet up on the table. “Careful, Blaise. I might think you’re encouraging the mingling of the magical and Muggle worlds,” he teased, trying to sound as much of a stuck up Pureblood as he could. He must have succeeded; Theo’s eyes widened in horror.

“Oh, come off it,” Blaise said, catching Theo’s expression. “It’s a good idea! I mean, how do any of them live like that?”

“It’s not so bad really,” Harry mused. “Cooking and cleaning can be relaxing.”

Blaise snorted, drinking Hermione’s wine straight from the bottle. 

“Yeah, right,” he said around his mouthful, then he swallowed and explained: “As if  _ Harry Potter  _ has cooked or cleaned a day in his life.”

Pansy smirked at that. Even Daphne laughed, in general agreement. 

“Of course I have,” he corrected. “That’s how I spent my whole childhood.”

“But you’re Harry Potter,” Pansy laughed.

“Would you stop saying that, you freaks?” he shot back, bumping his shoulder against Pansy’s. “That means more to you guys than it does to me, anyways. I didn’t even know how I got this scar until I came here.” 

There was a shocked silence.

“You’re having us on,” Blaise accused, watching Harry suspiciously.

“Honest!”

“Your folks never told you?”

“Nope.”

“But we all grew up hearing the story endlessly!” 

“Wish one of you had passed it along, then.” 

Blaise looked him up and down, deciding whether to believe him or not. “So wasn’t it weird then,” he said like he had just found a hole in Harry’s story, “when you came here and everyone started treating you like you were famous?”

“Still fucking is,” he said with a shrug.

The girls laughed, finally accepting his story. 

“Harry  _ bloody _ Potter didn’t even know he was a wizard! Can you believe it?” Daphne mused.

But Blaise was still looking at Harry. After a moment, he raised the wine bottle and clanked it against Harry’s glass.

“You’re all right, Potter,” he said, grinning cheekily. 

Harry rolled his eyes. “So you've said. Could have spared me the five years of torture, don’t you think?” 

“Well, you deserved it a  _ little _ bit.”

The next round of drinks seemed to revitalize everyone, because they suddenly had too much energy. Pansy had dragged Malfoy up from his couch and was trying to get him to dance with her, pulling his arms back and forth — which might have worked, if she wasn’t trying so hard to stay upright herself. 

Harry himself was feeling sleepy and warm, so he stayed on the couch for a while, just watching. He didn’t raise his head when a few fourth years boys had come over, asking for a drink, but he watched Pansy smile and fire “ _ Aguamenti!”  _ A stream of water began to shoot from the shorter one’s mouth. 

“There you go!” she said sweetly. 

Even Hermione was drunk enough to find that one funny. Blaise and Ron’s awkward truce had seemed to hold, because now they were racing to see who could transfigure the vases on the mantle into every letter of the alphabet the fastest. 

“Dance with me, Harry!” Hermione laughed as she tried to pull him off the couch and over to where Daphne was doing some wild flailing motions. But when he turned to join their little circle, he saw Malfoy turning the corner up into the stairwell. Pansy was dancing with Theo now, looking content. 

Harry had been thinking it over all day. He truly felt much better now that he had even the smallest idea of how to move forward, eager at the thought of discovering what Dumbledore had been hiding from Harry. 

Although he’d welcome the new information on Voldemort’s goals, looking at the situation objectively, Harry vaguely understood his strategy: sow fear and distrust in the Wizarding World so he could be the sole source of unity, kill and push out Muggleborns to purify Wizarding tradition, and recruit as many wizards as possible to his cause.

There was only one part of his current strategy that Harry still had no understanding of. He’d been trying to figure it out all year. 

And if he and the other Slytherins could talk out their misconceptions, why couldn’t he and Malfoy? Okay, admittedly there were a thousand reasons why, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t try. At least, that’s what he told himself, trying desperately to justify it. 

Turning away from Hermione’s dancing, he headed for the stairs and hoped no one would notice much that he was gone. After a moment spent steadying himself against the stone wall so he wouldn’t fall, Harry climbed up to his bedroom and crossed the empty dorm. 

Malfoy didn’t even look his way when Harry walked into the bathroom and ambled over to his side.

“Bum a fag?” he said, feeling the dopey quality to his own grin. He should not have had the last shot Blaise had offered. 

Malfoy looked over, his gray eyes cool and remote. “You don’t smoke.”

“You mean, your half-smoked cigarette aside?” 

He would have never mentioned it without the alcohol loosening his tongue, but right now he felt like he could say anything. He saw the rush of color hit Malfoy’s cheeks, the muscle in his jaw clenching.

“I mean my half-smoked cigarette aside,” Malfoy replied, his voice very even. 

Harry smirked. “Yeah, you’re right.” 

He propped his elbow against the windowsill and put his chin in his hand. Malfoy indulged his stare for a moment longer and then looked away, raising the cigarette to his lips. 

“I want to play another round,” Harry said, trying to keep his attention.

A low scoff. Malfoy blew out a puff of smoke. 

“Of course you do,” he said sardonically. “I’m so fascinating.”

“Come on,” Harry pressed, knowing full well nothing he said would make Malfoy agree if he didn't want to. “You can always tell me to sod off or lie to me, after all.”

Malfoy sighed, leaning back against the wall with his cigarette cradled between his hands. He looked bored and aloof. As always. 

“Go on,” he droned in mock exasperation. 

Harry bit his lip. He couldn’t remember which question had seemed most important, and now his body felt warm and tingly, and Malfoy was watching him expectantly, and he wanted to ask something stupid and insignificant but Malfoy would know he’d chickened out. 

Instead he said, “Was your father one of the ones who escaped?”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed into slits. If he wondered how Harry even knew about the breakout, he didn’t say. Instead he tapped the butt of his cigarette until the ash fell off and then stamped it with his foot.

“No.”

Harry waited for him to expand on that, but he should have known Malfoy wouldn’t. He wasn’t meeting his eyes anymore, staring blankly out the window, letting his cigarette burn.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. 

Malfoy scoffed. “No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” Harry rocked back on his heels. He wanted to say  _ so what?  _ though he didn’t think that would accomplish anything.

Malfoy finally gazed over at him, his stare accusing. “You went easy on me.” 

Harry wouldn’t categorize any question about Malfoy’s father as easy, but he supposed it was telling that Malfoy did. 

He shrugged. “Hopefully you’ll return the favor.” 

Malfoy smoked silently for a minute. He didn't seem very drunk at all. Harry hoped he didn’t either, but he couldn’t feel his lips anymore, which was a pretty good sign that he would regret this in the morning. At least his words weren’t slurring. Yet.

“I know you want to ask me if I was there,” Harry prodded, looking up at Malfoy coyly from under his lashes, skirting dangerous territory. 

But Malfoy only rolled his eyes again. 

“I don’t need to ask,” he shot back. “Seeing as I don’t have the intellect of a  _ toddler _ , I can piece together that you were just fine on my own.” 

“I have another question,” Harry said. 

“I haven’t even gone yet!”

“Well you’re taking too long. You can get two after.”

“Yes, I know basic maths, thanks.”

Harry sighed. He tried to summon all the sobriety left in him as he remembered what he should be asking. Maybe, under the influence (though just barely, it seemed), Malfoy would be more indulgent. 

He was strangely hesitant to say it. There was surely a more tactful way to do it, to hint at the subject, prod around to see how Malfoy responded. But he wasn’t feeling very artful tonight. 

“What do you want with the Vanishing Cabinet?” he blurted out.

Malfoy’s breath rushed out in a huff before his teeth snapped together. Harry was closing in on him, and he clearly didn’t like the feeling. 

“Nothing,” he said easily, despite his body language. “The Ministry took it. It’s useless to me.”

Harry didn’t doubt that was an honest answer, but it wasn’t what he was going for. He reframed the question.

“What  _ did  _ you want with it, then?”

“That’s a third question,” Malfoy shot back.

“Only cause you’re being difficult.” 

But he only stared, his lips pressed together in a line.

“Fine,” Harry rallied, “I’ll guess.”

Malfoy smiled wryly around his cigarette. “This should be interesting.”

Harry turned and paced down the wall, twirling his wand in his hand as he mused aloud. “If you were trying to form a passage with them — which as far as I know is their only real useful quality — then you were trying to get something into or out of Hogwarts. Probably in, because that’s a lot harder.” He turned back to Malfoy, projecting confidence. “So what does Voldemort want to smuggle in? A dark object, something cursed or hexed? A poison?”

Malfoy smirked. There was no joy behind the expression, only the smugness of a man still, at the current moment, winning their little battle for information.

“Technically, that’s multiple guesses.”

“Yeah. Any of them right?”

“Not even close,” he said. “And that’s the only answer you’re getting.” 

Harry resumed his stance against the window. 

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” he said.

Malfoy’s shoulders tensed. “I wish you wouldn’t try.”

“That’s too bad.” Malfoy almost laughed at that, and Harry grinned. “Now come on. If you get to give bullshit non-answers, I do too.”

“My answers were perfectly truthful.”

Harry waited. He couldn’t imagine what Malfoy would want to know about him. It was a long time before he turned to Harry again, his expression thoughtful and a new tension in his features.

“How did you fight him off? In fourth year?” he said, and then he pressed his lips together like he couldn’t believe he’d really said it. 

Harry’s heart was beating rapidly in his chest, from the memory or the alcohol, he didn’t know. He thought of Malfoy’s first answer: perfectly truthful, as he claimed, but not even remotely covering the full story. Two could play at that game.

“I Disarmed him,” he said simply. Malfoy rolled his eyes.

“Yes, everyone knows about your little  _ Expelliarmus  _ stunt. I meant, how did a first-year spell work against the Dark Lord?”

“Is that your second question?” Harry asked obtusely. See how Malfoy liked it for a change. 

“No,” he grumbled, looking down at his shoes. He stubbed out his cigarette before looking at Harry again.

“What were you—” he seemed to rethink that question, before beginning again, his voice quieter. “Whose memories were you watching, in the Pensieve?”

Harry took a deep breath. It was just a name. It wouldn’t hurt him if he said it out loud. 

“Sirius’s.” 

Malfoy nodded; Harry was sure, given his above-toddler intellect, that he had already gathered as much. Harry laughed, just a little, at the thought.

“You went easy on me.” 

It came out more of an accusation than he’d meant it, and Malfoy huffed. “You’re impossible. Next time, I’ll show no mercy. Promise.” 

Harry liked the idea of their little truth game continuing. Which he supposed was a very dangerous thing indeed. It was easy to tell himself that each day, each conversation, was bringing him closer to the knowledge of Malfoy’s plans, but he wasn’t sure how true that was. 

With the firewhiskey pumping through this blood, his feet feeling soft and unsteady beneath him, he thought:  _ I can be reckless too.  _ Because that’s how this felt, as he pushed off from the wall and staggered forward a step, almost reaching out to steady himself on Malfoy’s arm. 

Wantonly, wildly reckless.

Malfoy probably wanted to see him dead. Or, at the very least, supported people who did. Why was it so hard to remember that when Malfoy was in front of him, snarky and stony and unknowable? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read or commented so far!! Every single one means the world to me. And thank you guys for sticking around for the slow burn; we still have a long ways to go, but I hope you are all enjoying the ride.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I literally forgot to update this. Thank you for commenting and reminding me! I don't mind people asking at all. Also I'm not proofreading this because I'm not that kind of girl so let me know if I butchered the English language anywhere.

Despite the raging hangovers they all woke up with the next morning, their post-detention hangouts became a regular occurance. Nevermind that they’d barely say hello over breakfast; on Saturday nights, they were all the best of pals. It should be weird, but really, Harry didn’t expect much from the Slytherins. He supposed it would just be too strange for them to be nice to Gryffindors in public. 

That wasn’t the only new routine in Harry’s life. Although he had yet to venture any farther into Sirius’ memories, he would often repeat the two he had already seen, diving into the Pensieve whenever his insomnia got too bad. And then he would emerge before the third memory appeared, and go into the bathroom to breathe in the comforting smell of Malfoy’s cigarette smoke, and then they would insult each other with vitriol that neither of them seemed to believe was fully genuine anymore, and then they would never speak of these encounters ever again.

It was maddening. Not that Harry wanted them to acknowledge it — he didn’t know how he would explain it to Ron and Hermione without it sounding insane — he just wondered what it is they were doing. Because it was kind of insane.  _ Some nights, I can’t go to bed without talking to Draco Malfoy.  _

Insane. 

And wasn’t Malfoy supposed to hate him? Wasn’t that kind of his whole deal? So why hadn’t he just told Harry to piss off yet, if he really didn’t want Harry poking around in his business this year? 

But Harry couldn’t pretend they were just talking about a schoolyard rivalry anymore. Couldn’t pretend there weren’t real things at stake. Two weeks into October, on an ordinary Thursday morning, the first Ministry employees who stepped out of the fireplace found the body of Jennifer Wolpert splayed across the base of the fountain. She had been dead for weeks.

Nigel had been called from breakfast, and he hadn’t returned since. 

The closest Harry got to any meaningful discussion of this with Malfoy was one of their bathroom meetings. It was particularly late, or early, he supposed. There was a dim gray light fading in from over the lake, chasing away the darkness. 

Harry had gone to sleep fine that night. But when he dreamt, it was of snakes writhing through an empty chest cavity.

“Leona Dagworth,” he said into the silence of the bathroom. Neither of them had said a word yet. Now Malfoy looked over with a curious expression. Harry didn’t look away.

“She was twenty-two years old and three months pregnant. She died in Hogsmeade last month.”

The pale column of Malfoy’s throat constricted as he swallowed. He nodded, just slightly.

“I heard of it. I didn’t know her name.” 

And it was so insubstantial, such a totally inadequate response. He kept thinking that if Malfoy really was evil, if he was made of the same stuff as his aunt Bellatrix or any of the others, Harry would know. He would see it in his eyes. But that wasn’t true, was it? He might not be able to tell at all.

He wanted to reach forward and shake Malfoy’s shoulders, to break that perfect icy composure and say  _ how can you not care? _

“Her entire chest was torn open,” he said instead. “They conjured snakes inside of the wound and hung her body from the top of the Hog’s Head. Two others died out on the street, a man and woman. She could have made it to safety, but she wouldn’t leave him to die alone. I still don’t know their names.”

He watched Malfoy for the slightest reaction, hoping that some glimpse of humanity would slip through his mask. His chest rose and fell quicker than normal, and he looked very pale. That was it. 

“What do you want from me, Potter?” he said, his voice raw. 

“Would you have done it?” he pressed, too exhausted and desperate to care if he was pushing too far. “If they ordered you to? If he told you to kill that girl and her baby, and desecrate her corpse, and display her for everyone to see?”

“What kind of fucking question is that?” 

Harry reached forward and gripped Malfoy’s left arm, his fingers digging into the fabric of Malfoy’s shirt that obscured the Mark below it. 

“A _ fair one,”  _ he seethed. 

Malfoy looked down at Harry’s grasp. He could feel the tension in Malfoy’s arm as he resisted the urge to yank his arm free. When he looked up at Harry, there was something wild in his eyes.

But suddenly his chin jutted up, and then he did yank his arm back, roughly shaking off Harry’s hand. 

“Maybe I would,” he sneered, crossing his arms over his chest, his face cold and cruel.

There was no point talking to him like this. Harry went to bed, and hoped that his words might stick with Malfoy, and when he slept this time, he dreamed it was Malfoy on the roof of the Hogshead, flicking his wand to burn the girl inside alive. 

_ What do you want from me, Potter? _

It was a good question. Harry desperately wished he knew the answer. The next time Harry slid out of bed for the bathroom, the door was locked.

_ Fine,  _ he thought.  _ Better, really.  _

October crept along. Dumbledore, to their dismay, didn’t leave the school once after the attack at Hogsmeade. Their professors now expected them to perform all spells wordlessly, and their workload only continued to grow. Each morning at breakfast, they passed the Prophet’s Missing Persons list along in silence. Sometimes, at a familiar name, students would run from the Hall in tears. 

It was dizzying. To be worrying about the potion he’d bungled one moment, only to be distracted by a classmate lamenting a dead family member. He was sure that all his friends were now feeling the same way he had since May. Nothing seemed important anymore. 

But maybe his classmates weren’t as fatalistic as he was. In the third long week of the month, Harry trudged up to his dorm room after dinner to find Ginny sitting on Blaise’s bed. He stopped dead in the doorway, doing a double-take.

They really were just sitting though. They were actually quite chastely on opposite ends of the bed: Blaise leaning back against his pillows, Ginny with an elbow propped against the bed frame at the foot. 

Ginny’s face lit up when she saw him. If she caught his incredulous expression, she ignored it in favor of yelling, “Harry, we’re throwing a party!” 

He tried to muster up the appropriate level of enthusiasm as he crossed the room and dropped his bag on his bed. 

“Are we?” he said.

“Well, Blaise was going to go back to the  _ dungeons,”  _ she gave a little shudder, “so I told him we had to prove that Gryffindor Tower knows how to have a good time.” 

“I’ve seen you take shots, woman,” Blaise shook his head. “I know that already.”

Standing at the foot of his bed, Harry could see into the small gap of Malfoy’s bed curtains. Inside, Malfoy was laying on his back, still fully dressed in his robes, with Pansy curled up on his chest, fast asleep. Harry didn’t realize Malfoy was awake until he looked up and met cool gray eyes. Without moving a muscle, Malfoy spelled his curtains shut with a snap.

Harry gritted his teeth. “I think a party sounds great.”

“Yes!” Ginny bounced up and down a bit. “Halloween’s on a Thursday, but we can all bear being a little tired at Friday lessons. Now as for costumes, we can’t let any of the first years come as ghosts, or Nick will ruin the whole thing with his whinging…”

“We can’t let any of the first years come at all, Weasley!” came Blaise’s horrified response. 

By the next day, the party was all anyone could talk about. Pansy was in charge of the drink menu, and Harry frequently saw her in his bedroom over the next few days, trying out recipes for them to sample (away from Millicent’s prying eyes). She was trying out a spell that made the drink change color each time you sipped it. 

“Should probably just spell the cups, rather than the liquid itself,” Malfoy added helpfully. It was the first time Harry had heard his voice in days. 

“Fuck, that’s a good one,” Pansy accepted.

If Malfoy was at all affected by Harry’s words — aside from locking him out of their midnight talks — he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed to be in the best spirits he’d been in all year. He had thrown himself back into his studies, producing three perfect potions in a row and using his proficiency with wordless magic to get his Charms and Transfiguration marks up. If he ever really applied himself, Harry privately thought he might stand a chance at beating Hermione. 

They ignored each other whenever they were in the same space, even with the increasing friendship between the Gryffindors and Slytherins. Harry wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence first. Like he gave a shit if a bloody Death Eater didn’t like what he had to say. It had been the truth after all. 

No one noticed their tension; they had never talked in public, anyways, so outwardly nothing had changed. Ron and Blaise shouted Quidditch scores down the table at each other over breakfast (because to sit with each other would be ridiculous, naturally), their discussions always vaguely antagonistic even though Ron would admit now that he thought Blaise was an alright guy. Hermione and Daphne frequently shared notes in the library or at the common room tables, and Pansy even jumped into their revisions sometimes, hypothesizing about what material would make it onto the next test. 

They were — slowly, imperceptibly, and none of them would admit it out loud — becoming friends.

Pansy pressured him to get his costume ready the entire week leading up to the party, but he kept shaking her off. He really had no desire to put any effort into a costume — weren’t they a little old for that? — but Pansy wouldn’t hear it. 

“No costume, no entry,” she declared firmly on Wednesday morning when he blew her off again. 

“What are you gonna do, bar me from the common room?”

“You bet your ass I will.” She flashed her shiny badge with a smirk. “Prefect’s privileges.”

On the day of, Pansy and Daphne disappeared after the Halloween Feast to get ready. He was slightly horrified wondering what costume could possibly take three hours to prepare, but girls were a mystery anyways. Pansy had left Hermione in charge of decorations, and she ordered the common room clear.

They retreated up to the boy’s dorm. Ron was busy fashioning his costume, changing the color of his bedsheets and trying to get them to hold shape around his torso. It took some time before they stayed up, draped in a perfect circle around him, and Harry snickered at the look. Ron was going as the Golden Snitch. 

“Now I just have to figure out some wings…” he murmured, entirely too invested in this.

Harry kicked back in his bed, folding his hands under his head. Over the next half hour, Theo transformed into a remarkably accurate Dumbledore: perfect silver hair, half-moon spectacles, and long starburst robes. Blaise laughed so hard at the sight that he messed up his own hair-growth charm and had to start over.

When he was done, he had a long reddish-gold mane. He clipped a stuffed scorpion tail to the back of his trousers.

“Chickened out a bit there, but what if the spell went wrong? I’d be left walking around with a fucking  _ pincer.” _

Finally he transformed his robes into a golden color and sprouted hair over his hands so they resembled paws. Harry had to give it to him; he was a perfect Manticore. Well, as perfect as he could be, and still be a human boy. 

“Alright, boys.” Blaise clapped his fluffy hands together. Then he spotted Harry. “Earth to Potter? It’s _Halloween,_ you remember, yes? And don’t tell me you're going as The Boy Who Lived, or I’ll kill you myself.”

Harry groaned and rolled over in his bed, burying his face in his pillows.

“I’ll figure it out in a minute. Go on without me.” 

Ron slapped him on the back of his head as he passed. “Don’t you leave me alone out there!” he said in warning, before the boys disappeared down the stairs. 

Harry laid there for a while, long enough for the sound of music to reach him from downstairs, the occasional smatter of laughter or ghostly groan carrying up from the party. He sighed and rolled onto his back, staring up at his bed frame. Pansy would never forgive him if he blew her off. Nor would Ron, for that matter.

He stood and tried to think of a stupid costume to throw together. It was silly wasn’t it? But the boys had been having fun with it. Harry didn’t have to be joyless and sulking  _ all  _ the time. 

Although, Harry could hardly imagine Malfoy dressing up either. He looked over at Malfoy’s empty bed. He hadn’t seen him since the feast, stuffing himself with carrot cake. Although he must have slipped up here for a moment, because his book bag and tie were discarded on his bed.

The sight of it sent a wild rush through Harry. He took a step closer. He couldn’t… He  _ shouldn’t _ … It would be terribly funny though… 

Harry went over to the mirror and cast a color changing charm over his robes, straightening out the collar and tucking his shirt into his pants to look like a real stuffy Slytherin. Maybe the party wouldn’t be half bad now. He found a new buoyancy in his step as he crossed the dorm room, stopping only to snag Malfoy’s tie from his bed and fasten it around his own neck, making sure the distinctive silver snake tie pin was securely in place.

Harry stopped at the bottom of the stairs to take in the sight. On Pansy’s orders, Hermione had done a brilliant job transforming the common room. It hardly looked like the place where they wasted afternoons playing chess and stressed over last minute assignments. 

Pumpkins levitated above their heads, their eyes and mouths glowing, as charmed bats swooped low over the crowd. An eerie white mist was emanating from somewhere he couldn’t see, giving the room a creepy blurriness as purple and red lights flickered on and off. And all the lion’s heads in the room had been turned into skeletons that roared with appropriate fury.

Every upperclassmen in the Tower seemed to be there, dancing and drinking and eating the food they had swiped from the kitchens after dinner. Harry spotted the girls at the drinks table and pushed through the crowd to join them.

When she turned and spotted him, Pansy slapped a hand over her mouth. Once he was in reach, she swatted him in the chest, mischief in her eyes.

“You cheeky bastard!” she cried.

Hermione laughed, giving him a scrolling look from head to toe. “If it weren’t so horrifying, it’d be brilliant Harry.”

“We’ll make a Slytherin of you yet,” Pansy said, grinning up at him. 

The girls’ costumes were intricate and vivid. Pansy was a sphinx, with a solid gold headdress and a lion’s tail that — unlike Blaise’s — was perfectly real. She swished it at him, laughing when he jumped back. Daphne had come as Rita Skeeter, which Harry thought was brilliant. Her hair was coiled in tight blonde ringlets around her face, her nails long and red, and she wore jewelled spectacles that Harry would have believed she stole straight from the real woman’s face. Hermione was a very convincing pixie, with pointy, enlarged ears and a faint blue hue over the entire surface of her skin.

“Try a drink!” Pansy exclaimed, pushing something into his hands. He took a swig and immediately startled; it was sickly sweet and ridiculously strong.

“You’re going to be picking us up off the floor,” he grinned, taking another sip. It tasted like apple pie, if apple pie was bordering on inedible, but it wasn’t altogether bad. She beamed, taking it as a compliment. 

Someone had put on a Weird Sisters’ album, and the song shifted to “Do the Hippogriff,” immediately livening the crowd. Two Slytherin boys in hippogriff costumes clambered on top of the nearest table, clutching each other for balance as they shouted the lyrics over the crowd.

“I hope you cast a silencing charm,” Harry said.

Hermione laughed. “Many of them.”

Harry was happy to see some of his former housemates in the crowd. Neville came up to him in a sack of green robes with a stem growing from the top of his head.

“You make a lovely Mandrake,” he teased. Neville tipped the lip of his drink against Harry’s with a grin. 

Ron and Blaise were on the outskirts against the walls, Vanishing drinks from unsuspecting partygoers’ hands. They were both clearly a few drinks in already, because each time their victim looked around, slightly panicked as they tried to find the source of the spell, the two collapsed against each other in hysterics. 

Harry mingled for a while, dancing with the girls for a bit, joining in on the boy’s prank after that. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t looking for the one missing face in the crowd, but he wasn’t fooling himself. Multiple times he turned at a flash of white hair in his periphery, only to curse Theo’s perfect Dumbledore costume.

Blaise was the only one to notice the tie pin.

“How’d you get Draco to lend you that?” Blaise asked, incredulous.

Harry shrugged, popping a piece of candy into his mouth. “I didn’t.”

“Bloody legend,” Blaise declared, throwing his arm around Harry’s shoulders. 

Harry resisted the urge to go check the Map a dozen times. Malfoy was going to show. Pansy wouldn’t let him skip. That was what he told himself half the time. The other half, he scolded himself for even caring at all. Why did he want him to show up anyway? So he could ignore him and ruin the fun?

Harry stalked over to the punch bowl, scowling. He’d only allowed himself the one drink, and was now sipping cider for the rest of the night. He didn’t know why he didn’t trust himself to get drunk, but everything felt a little too close to the surface these days. 

He downed the glass and threw it into the trash with a little too much force. 

“You really look like a Slytherin now,” a cool voice said behind him. “Although we don’t usually get so worked up in public.”

Harry turned. Malfoy was leaning against the fireplace, one hip propped against the stone, and he took in Harry’s appearance with only the slightest tightening of his eyes. 

Malfoy was a vampire. His two incisors had been charmed, so now they glistened as perfect, pearly-white fangs. His robes were entirely black, pulled up high over his neck, and a line of blood dripped from the corner of his mouth down his chin.

“Oh yeah?” Harry replied. “Your little Hippogriff meltdown in third year must have been someone else then.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes and sipped his drink, looking out over the crowd and away from Harry with a bored expression. 

“So you’re speaking to me again?” he said, even though he probably shouldn’t, and was rewarded with Malfoy’s gaze swinging back to him. 

He glared at Harry. “I was never not speaking to you.”

“Oh really? Fell mute over the past few weeks, then, did you?”

“Had it ever occurred to you, Potter, that I simply had nothing to say to you?”

“After our last conversation?” Harry shot back. “No, it didn’t.” 

“Whatever,” Malfoy said, pushing off the fireplace. Harry thought he was leaving, but he only walked forward towards the table. 

He seemed to come deliberately close to Harry. Harry straightened, but Malfoy only reached out a hand, curling it around Harry’s tie and causing it to pull tight against his neck.

Harry expected a snarky comment. But Malfoy only trailed a finger over the silver pin and then let the tie flop back against Harry’s chest as he turned to get a drink. 

“It suits you,” he said simply, already turned away.

Harry watched the side of Malfoy’s face as he poured himself another cider, his mind completely blank as to what to respond. Malfoy ignored his stare heroically, downing his drink completely before he tossed the cup aside. 

If Harry hadn’t been watching him so closely, he would have missed the moment when Malfoy’s face tightened imperceptibly, his hands knitting together nervously in front of him. He could practically hear Malfoy’s brain turning.

Malfoy looked over and steadied himself with a breath.

“Clara Stevens and Peter Sinclair,” he said, his voice so low and intense that Harry might have missed it over the music if they weren’t already standing so close.

Harry’s mouth opened on a question, automatically confused at the unfamiliar names, but then it snapped shut with a rush of understanding. There could only be two people Malfoy was referring to. He had told Malfoy that he never learned the names of the man and woman who’d died on the street in Hogsmeade.

In their two weeks of silence, Malfoy had. 

With a last look at Harry’s stunned expression, Malfoy turned and disappeared into the crowd. 

Harry didn’t see him again for the rest of the night.

And as he danced with his friends, or watched his classmates make fools of themselves, or laughed as Daphne chased them around with a Quick Quotes Quill (“ _ Harry Potter reaches for his third glass of the night, perhaps hinting at a future of rampant alcoholism”),  _ he tried to tell himself that he was having fun. That something wasn’t missing, and that he didn’t feel that  _ something’s  _ absence keenly.

But he would only be lying to himself.

~*~

Friday morning classes were indeed miserable, but everyone was still riding the high of the party too much to mind. In Transfiguration, McGonagall smiled at them knowingly.

“You might consider visiting Madam Pomfrey for some Pepper-Up,” she said tartly, when Blaise’s  _ Crinos Muto —  _ the spell he had performed effortlessly last night to grow his mane — failed for the third time. He moaned and put his head in his hands. 

They were still behind on sleep come Saturday morning, and Harry nearly had to drag Ron out of bed for their weekly detention.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Theo groaned, very melodramatic without his beauty sleep. 

“Should have thought about that before you tried to  _ Crucio _ me,” Harry sniped back, and for once Theo only glared back at him in silence. 

Luck was on their side, however; today’s detention had them sorting the files in the back room of McGonagall’s office, a job endlessly more pleasant than any of the detentions they’d had so far. To make it even better, Blaise managed to cast a silencing spell over the room before McGonagall confiscated their wands, which meant that they were free to relive the party’s highlights all morning.

“I heard they had to levitate Parvati back down to the dungeons!” Daphne recounted with a giggle. “She was on her fifth glass of Pansy’s little devil’s mix the last time I saw her.”

“Not a drink for the faint of heart,” Pansy shook her head with a mocking frown.

“I can still taste it in the back of my throat.” Harry shuddered. “I think it burned a hole in my stomach.” 

They were sorting enrollment rosters by year dating back to the sixteen hundreds. It was mindless, boring work, and Harry’s mind was free to wander. Unfortunately, these days, there was only one topic his mind wandered back to.

Malfoy was reading some of the funny names from the Class of 1654 to Pansy and Blaise, who kept joking that he was probably related to them. He seemed happy, for once; completely unconcerned.

Harry, on the other hand, had been thinking about him for two days straight. 

Part of him couldn’t help but wonder if he had hallucinated the entire encounter. Everything about it was strange and charged, and under the lights of the party — the ghostly white smoke and the blaring music — the memory had taken on a strange, warped quality. He kept feeling the ghost of Malfoy’s touch, pulling the tie tight around his neck. The tie that Malfoy was now himself wearing, after Harry had dropped it back onto Malfoy’s bed after the party. After making sure that Malfoy wasn’t in the room, and before sneaking back to his bed in silence. 

Like a coward.

But what was he supposed to say? He felt dizzy with the weight of Malfoy’s words. The idea that he had sought out those names, not just for Harry, but maybe for himself, too… 

Harry didn’t want to hope. He didn’t want to imagine, just for a second, that something could finally break through Malfoy’s cold indifference. But then he blinked, and saw behind his eyelids the smear of blood along his lips, the wink of his fangs under the purple strobe lights, and the quiet, desperate note to his voice when he had said their names. It played on a constant loop in Harry’s brain.

He knew it shouldn’t matter this much to him, that he shouldn’t let it matter this much, but maybe he just needed to prove something to himself. If a scared kid could be pulled away from the dark side, then surely there was still something right and good about the order of the world. Why Harry thought he would be the one to do it, to pull Malfoy back from the edge when Malfoy had hated him for their entire childhood, he didn’t know, but he still couldn’t shake off the desire to try. 

He didn’t know why this felt so important, when so few things did these days. Or why he kept hearing Malfoy’s soft words echo in his head.  _ It suits you…  _

Malfoy had spoken first. That was what was important. He had given Harry an inch, which was far more than he would have in previous years. That was all Harry needed. 

The group had decided to forgo their routine post-detention cocktails, still recovering from the copious amount of alcohol they’d consumed on Thursday night. Instead, after McGonagall finally dismissed them at the year 1680, they lounged around in the common room with the leftover pastries. 

Malfoy didn’t join them. But Harry didn’t need to check the Map; he knew exactly where Malfoy would be. Popping a last piece of treacle fudge into his mouth, he ducked away from the group and headed for the seventh floor before he could talk himself out of it. 

In their two week silence, Harry had tried to follow Malfoy into the Room of Requirement a handful of times, but the door refused to appear to him. He had paced along the wall, thinking every combination he could. 

_ I need to see what Malfoy is doing in here. I need to see the place where Malfoy keeps coming secretly. I need you to become the place you become for Draco Malfoy.  _

None of it had worked. The stone remained cool and solid, and Harry had trudged back to the common room unsuccessful.

But things had changed since then. He could feel it in his bones, in the weight of Malfoy’s stare. 

He paced three times along the stretch of wall and thought, as forcefully as he could:  _ I need to help Draco Malfoy.  _

The gleaming door materialized from the wall. Harry’s heart thudded in his chest as he reached for the brass handle.

He stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind him, and he found himself in impenetrable darkness once again. He took a step further into the room, very gingerly. 

“Malfoy?” he whispered, hoping he wasn’t about to find himself unarmed again.

The lights flickered on. This time, they weren't standing in the small square room from before. They were standing in a space almost identical to the one he had used for the DA practices, with cushions lining the floor and a full library along the walls. 

Malfoy was standing at the center of the room, watching him with his wand raised. Across from him at the other end of the mat was the black box — the shadow dueller from Snape’s tryouts.

Harry ignored Malfoy’s defensive stance and said, with a casual raised brow, “I didn’t take you for suicidal.”

Malfoy’s gaze flickered behind him at the door. 

“How did you get in here?” he said warily.

“I don’t know, really. Was it not supposed to let me in?” 

“I tell the Room when I enter to go empty whenever a threat tries to enter.” 

Harry smirked at that and gestured at the still furnitured space. “Well, then, I guess you can lower your wand.” 

Malfoy did. He was breathing quickly, the collar of his shirt just slightly damp with sweat, and his perfectly kempt hair was ruffled. He had been practicing. Against the dueller that had tried to kill him.

“Is that a good idea?” Harry gestured at the box again, taking a few steps closer like it was the most normal thing in the world for him to be here.

“Snape checked it out for me. Whatever went wrong before, it’s fine now.” 

“Right. You trust Snape that much?”

“Well, it’s the only option I have.” He gave a snotty little smirk. “There’s no real wizard here good enough to face me.”

Harry couldn’t disagree. “You could invite Dumbledore down for a few rounds, though I doubt he would accept.”

Malfoy narrowed his eyes, likely deciding that he had indulged this conversation long enough.

“What do you want?” he demanded. 

Harry jerked his head in the direction of the black box. “Can I watch?”

“No you most certainly  _ cannot! _ ” 

“Come on. I’ve already seen you fight.”

“Yes, I didn’t forget your little peepshow,” he sneered.

“You make it sound so lewd,” Harry sighed, plopping down into one of the cushions along the wall.

“Hey!” Malfoy barked, stomping over to him with his hands on his hips. “I said get out.” 

“You said ‘no,’” Harry reminded him.

“It was  _ implied _ .”

Harry gave a lazy stretch, kicking his feet out in front of him and crossing his ankles. He leaned back until his head rested against the wall. Malfoy watched him, his face growing increasingly pinched. 

Finally he rolled his eyes and turned away, stalking over to the box.

“You are so infuriating.”

Wordlessly, the box snapped closed. Harry liked when Malfoy showed off in front of him. Though he would never admit it, he desperately wanted to see Malfoy fight again. A wordless or wandless spell here and there couldn’t possibly compare with the display he had seen the first week of the year.

Malfoy had never answered that question, the first one Harry had demanded of him, before their truth game had even begun. Maybe he would have better luck now.

“Who taught you how to fight?” he asked as Malfoy rolled up his sleeves and levitated the box into the corner.

“Are we starting another round?”

Harry shrugged. “If we have to.”

Malfoy shot him a baleful grin over his shoulder. “Nothing for free, Potter.” 

Yes, of course. Because Harry was dealing with the most difficult man on the planet. 

He sighed. “Fine, then. That’s my question.” 

Malfoy folded up the mats with a flick of his hands. He ran his long fingers through his hair, lifting the sweat-dampened strands off his forehead, and then, in a gesture that seemed awkward and unsure, sunk into the cushion across from Harry. 

“My mother,” he finally answered.

Harry grinned at that. He couldn't help it. “Really?” 

“Yes,  _ really _ . She’s quite incredible.”

“Just for fun?” Harry pressed.  _ That’s two questions,  _ he could have sworn Malfoy would say, but he only looked back at him with a slightly withering quality to his stare.

“I hope you’re being deliberately dense,” Malfoy said.

Harry blinked back at him.

“In case you’d forgotten,” he continued snippily, “The Dark Lord has taken up residence inside my home.”

That was all he said, but the implication was astounding. Harry’s brows shot up towards his hairline.

“She wanted you to  _ fight Voldemort?”  _ he said, disbelieving. 

“No, she didn’t want that. But she wanted me to have the option, if it came down to it.”

Harry reeled with the information, trying to work it into everything he knew about Malfoy. His mother wasn’t a Death Eater, after all. Was it really just Lucius, then, who had gotten them in too deep? Who’d been carted off to Azkaban, leaving his wife and sixteen year old son at Voldemort’s mercy? 

Harry felt a new appreciation for Narcissa Malfoy.

“How long did it take?” Harry said. 

“We practiced every night, for months. When I graduated beyond her ability, we used something similar to Snape’s dueller. And I read theory, in our library, whenever he wasn’t around.” 

A million questions were threatening to burst from Harry’s mouth. He wanted to ask what Malfoy thought of Voldemort, how their first meeting had gone, if Malfoy had been afraid. He wanted to ask how far Malfoy’s loyalty to him still went. But Malfoy had already indulged him with more than one question, and Harry didn’t want him to close up on him, as he so often did. 

Malfoy seemed to be assessing his reaction. 

“Satisfy your curiosity?” he asked. 

Harry looked up into his eyes.  _ What do you want from me,  _ Malfoy had asked him. He hadn’t known what Malfoy had to offer then, or what he was willing to give. Now, he let the words fall out of his mouth without thinking.

“I want you to teach me,” he said in a rush of breath. 

The room was very quiet, the torches flickering over Malfoy’s pale face.

“Teach you,” Malfoy repeated flatly, as if the words were a foreign language.

“How to fight like that. Like you.”

Malfoy scoffed and shoved up to his feet, pacing away from Harry. Neither of them said anything for a minute, as Malfoy raked his hands through his hair and thrummed his fingers along his bicep. Finally he turned back to him.

“Snape’s already teaching defense workshops.”

Harry stood so he was level with Malfoy’s stare. “You’re better than Snape,” he said, “and you know it.”

Malfoy didn’t react to the praise. His expression didn’t shift at all. 

“Why?” he said. “Why now?” 

He thought of giving some bullshit excuse, but Malfoy would see through it. Malfoy had always thought him pig-headed and arrogant, inflated on his own sense of fame. So he let some of the legend of Harry Potter fade away, and gave Malfoy a truth, entirely for free.

“Your aunt almost killed me last month.”

Malfoy’s face cleared in immediate understanding. “In Hogsmeade.”

“Yeah.” Harry swallowed, taking a breath. “I’m not good enough to face them,” he admitted. “Any of them. The Ministry was dumb luck, again. And it’s my fault, because I’ve never taken it seriously enough. But next time I want to be ready.” 

“Ready to kill my aunt in return,” Malfoy scoffed. “And you want me to help you with that.” 

Harry said nothing. There was nothing to say. If he was right, and Malfoy really did have doubts, and Malfoy really still could be reached, then he could only wait for Malfoy to choose this path for himself.

Malfoy’s jaw clenched as he looked Harry up and down.

“It’s very difficult,” he said, in a tone that was really a little insulting. 

Harry smiled. “I’m sure.”

“And I may not be a good teacher.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

“And it may not make any difference, in the end,” Malfoy finished.

“Probably not,” he said seriously. “You’re always going on about how thick I am.” 

Malfoy crossed his arms over his chest, his muscles flaring under the thin cotton of his t-shirt.

“What would you give me in return?”

Harry should have expected that one. Bloody Slytherins.

“What do you want?” he said, and he saw Malfoy pull back, ever so slightly, at the words. His gray eyes flickered in the torchlight.

“Nothing you have to offer,” he said, his voice strangely stripped down. And then, with a shrug he couldn’t quite manage to be casual: “I’ll guess you’ll just have to owe me.”

“Okay,” Harry said dumbly. Was Malfoy really agreeing to this?

“After Defence practices. They’ll be your warmup. Then you’ll meet me here to do real work.”

Nevermind that Snape’s workshops had already grown ridiculously difficult. Since the Hogsmeade attack, the students had committed themselves to them with a renewed intensity, but they were all struggling to keep up. Of course, for Malfoy, it was child’s play.

Harry nodded belatedly, realizing Malfoy was already at the door behind him. 

How had he managed to pull that one off?

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know your thoughts below! New update on Friday.


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